Reflective Essay: The Art Of Understanding As A Teacher

The art of understanding as a teacher is an invaluable skill. To teach, you must understand where your students are coming from and what motivates them not only to learn but succeed. It is this principle that one of my past teachers was severely lacking in. Mrs. Sopor seemed unable to put herself in her student’s shoes and demonstrated a high level of immaturity through my experiences with her.

As a student, I was an overachiever. For example- I lettered 9 times throughout my high school career and that doesn’t even touch on my involvement in the Junior ROTC program. I wanted to succeed and I wanted to learn. My favorite core subject was English because of my history with it. I could write fully developed essays in an hour and I enjoyed it. Writing required me to understand new and interesting things; learning was one of my greatest joys! Poetry was dancing with words. It was this facet of myself and the posters I had seen hanging in her classroom that had me endlessly excited for Mrs. Sopor’s creative writing class.

I had been hospitalized the previous year for mental illnesses and all my teachers were alerted. I knew going into this English class that sensitive subjects would be brought up. I knew this and I told her just in case. I had even mentioned it in an in-class discussion about the stigmas around mental illness. The entire class knew. Still, the book reports come up and she said nothing about any troubling subject matter that may be breached. My mental illness stems from abuse; two books in a row were very graphic depictions of abuse. One of the covers even portrayed an exact situation I had gone through. The imagery triggered a panic attack during class. I stood up with tears streaming down my face, approached her desk and told her I needed to be excused. I fled to the bathroom until the attack was over. Mrs. Sopor never apologized, even after my obvious discomfort. She never even made a comment about it to