Ever since middle school, I feel as if my passion for learning has dramatically decreased. So what happened between my middle school and high school years?

High school teachers don’t see their students as frequently as middle school students, but that’s not it. There has been an increased difficulty of the information we are learning since middle school, but that’s not it either. The more that I think about it, the more clear that it becomes. It isn’t what I’m learning, or how often I’m learning it that is affecting the level of passion I have for learning, but how I am learning.

The teachers at middle school were personable and made sure that learning was fun for everyone. Somewhere along the transition from middle school to high school I think that teachers have lost that. When I think about all of my favorite classes that I have taken throughout my high school career a lot of the times it isn’t necessarily the content that made it so great, but the teacher.

A teacher can make a huge impact on a student’s life, and I don’t think enough teachers realize this. Looking back at my academic career that I have had thus far, I can selectively name several teachers that have had a big enough impact on me to create a change in myself that I still see today. If a teacher teaches passionately enough, they can turn a hate towards writing, into a love; an indifference towards reading, into an affinity; an inability to do math, into a capability.

People don’t understand how easy it is to make an impact, good or bad, on a person. Teachers, being authority figures, need to have a greater realization of this. Teachers have the capability of changing a generation in the power of their hands; it is up to them to take advantage of this.