To Be or Not To Be? (Cool, that is)

When being judged by coworkers or parents, one might be considered to be a great teacher solely for having extensive knowledge on the subject matter taught in the classroom. They keep the class in order, stay on schedule, and take everything very seriously. Perhaps this is considered great when you read the definition directly from the book, but students who are in the classroom with such people might say otherwise. If a teacher follows the school policy strictly and reads directly from a textbook, with no personal incorporation into his or her teachings, students are bound to have a harder time focusing and staying interested in class. Though being "cool" certainly isn't a good enough reason to be hired, whether or not a teacher is personable enough to interact well with a particular generation of students is definitely to be taken into account.

In the bloggingheads diavlog between William Deresiewicz and Mark Edmundson, it is argued that teachers "need to resist the temptation to be cool, because the job of the teacher is, in a sense, to be uncool; not to model the conventional behavior that students are emulating, but to be ourselves." It is fully understood that if a teacher were to exhibit this conventional behavior, there would just be one more adolescent in the classroom. It is always important for a teacher to maintain some degree of authority to keep students in line. However, if a teacher were to be his or her own self in the classroom and made a few students laugh, becoming "cool" in the process, wouldn't that make this statement self-contradictory? It seems almost ridiculous for a person to change from being "cool" to "uncool" in order to ensure an amount of respect. It would make much more sense if this "coolness" could be used as a way to interact with the students on a much more comprehensive level, where concepts and ideas could be conveyed in ways that are easier to understand and remember.

There is a huge difference, however between being cool and taken seriously, and being cool and completely disrespected. This is something one must be aware of at all times when teaching, because if they were to use the incorrect methods, they would end up with a group of students no better off than when they entered the classroom. A teacher may be as cool as he or she likes, but if authority and a certain set of guidelines are not enforced, there will be no motivation to finish the work. It would be egotistical and damaging to the student if the teacher put "coolness" as a top priority over teaching.

In most cases, however, students generally have low expectations of cool when it comes to teachers (this is the case with most of their authority figures). Naturally, if a teacher and a student tell the same joke, it's going to sound a lot funnier coming from the teacher, simply because it's unexpected. Because it is unexpected, students will become more interested in what the teacher has to say. If teachers were to use this to their advantage, they could mix humor or personal experience with the subject being taught, and therefore make it much easier for students to remember. It's much easier for anyone, let alone students, to recall information when presented in a comfortable casual way, rather than straight out of a textbook using the most complicated words possible. Anybody, even a high school student, could read information out of a book to a group of people. The role of the teacher is much more difficult and important to grasp, and school's should take the hiring process more seriously.

Unfortunately, nobody's perfect, and this applies to teachers, as well. Not every student is going to be pleased by the eccentricities of a loved professor, or find it easier to stay on task when a pop culture reference is blended with a difficult concept. According to Professor Edmundson, "There are about 10% who don't like the professor at all". It's much easier to focus on that 10% instead of the 90% who were either pleased with or didn't mind the teachings of the professor. If anything, a student disagreeing with a professor's personality or quirks would incline a student to search for reasons to disagree with him, and therefore pay even more attention than the rest of the classmates.

Education is an amazing luxury, and students tend to forget that when it is presented unenthusiastically and without any sort of interest from its presenter. In order to create an amount of interest that will produce the most success, we need to have teachers who can present such a luxury in a way that students can appreciate, so its importance is not forgotten. If a teacher can do so in such a way that keeps students interested through a few nerdy jokes, then who is the administration to stop them?