In schools. teachers are responsible for grading students including their essays, classwork, and tests. However, the idea of students grading teachers introduces an interesting concept to society, while it has many advantages and disadvantages, it violates the established norms. The suggestion of this concept may seem doubtful and interesting; it can raise the expectation norms of fairness, educational purposes, and teaching advice.
From my point of view, students should be allowed to grade their teachers. Think about a time you have struggled in school with a certain class. We all have and that is not really our fault most of the time. We have all had a subject we struggled with the most and not because we were dumb but because sometimes our teachers aren’t good at teaching and it is not their fault. Teachers are as human as we are and we as humans always make mistakes. The reality in the real world is that most of the time the reason why students have a bad grade in a class is because teachers are not good at teaching or explaining. It is not fair to a student to fail a class just because they don’t understand it because the teacher is not good at explaining or teaching them. There are many teachers who sometimes don’t even care to offer help to the students.
From my personal experience, I am currently struggling in chemistry and I personally think that it’s not me but it is my teacher. I feel like she is a good teacher but I just sometimes wish she can explain things in a more simple way to ensure that everyone understands the what, whys, and whens of what we are learning. The reason why I have convinced myself that the teacher is the cause of my understanding in her class is because there are multiple students that are currently struggling in chemistry and it wouldn’t be possible or reasonable to say that the reason why we are struggling is because we’re dumb. I mean, half of us spend time studying and trying to get a better understanding of the subject but sometimes it is just hard to learn things yourself. Sometimes all you need is tutoring from your teacher but also sometimes those teachers don’t have the time to tutor you and when they do it is during the time you’re not available.
One main thing that society doesn’t understand is that students are kids growing as young adults and school is very draining and messes with their mental health a lot. It is not always okay to blame yourself for having a bad grade, it’s sometimes okay to understand that it is not your fault but your teachers. We students are barely grown up and it is not healthy to have a bad perspective of yourself just because of one silly grade a teacher gives you. Getting a grade in a class is like getting an opinion and one opinion can have a deep meaning and have either a good or bad effect on you. The same way students get feedback from their teachers can also be a good way for students to give feedback to their teachers. Teachers make mistakes and it can always be good to have an opinion from your students and view your low and high points in the way you’re working with them.
In this case, students grading teachers can be a survey students fill out every 2 weeks about how good the teacher has been teaching her class and if they understand it and what they could improve on. These surveys would get an average and go to a teachers report and if the teachers take those opinions into consideration and improve then the feedback will eventually improve causing their reports to increase in a positive way but if they don’t take those advice into consideration then it will be more likely for their reports to stay the same or decrease in a negative way. These reports will show a teacher’s performance at the end of the school year and affect their job performance in whichever way the school district chooses to handle it. I plan on having the student council and vice president of the school take that into consideration and promote it and have the school vote on this idea and decide if it should be something happening. We can make this happen by sharing an essay like this one to others and sharing our feelings and reasons why it should happen and convincing others to make this happen.
In conclusion, schools should take this idea into consideration and have their school vote on whether this is a good idea. This can have many benefits for students and can even benefit students in improving their grades, this can not only just benefit students but also can benefit the teachers and the schools performance in general. This is an amazing idea to make school more fair for both students and teachers and can overall just raise awareness on what teachers need to improve and which ones don’t.
Eileen Marie Cotorra