Hey, teacher! Leave those kids alone!

As those of you who actually read up on this blog know, I've been writing paper for a couple days. And I just finished it! Yayy. I also just drove to campus to hand it in at 4am hoping my prof chose tomorrow morning to pick it up and not this morning. Either way, this prof is the bomb and he won't penelize me for late submission. He'll pick it up one day, read it, mark it, and give me a final mark for the full-year class I just finished. Sounds like a given but I've had some profs be so strict on the syllabus-given due dates that this would never slide. But he's not mean. Alright, let me just fill you in on this prof, although many of you who know me already know how awesome this dude is because I talk about him all the time. But I'm just going to throw this right out into the internet universe for the sake of paying respect... Gregory Cameron is the best teacher I've ever had.

It may have taken me a semester and a half to realize it, but I did. I couldn't see it first semester when I saw him just as this cartoon character I had drawn up of him... and the fact that I had him for a certain communications course at 9am Mondays and Wednesdays. I just couldn't see past that early wake up on Monday mornings especially. I would always wonder what he would think when he would see me attend his Tuesday and Thursday cultural studies classes. (couldn't have been that bad, I got a B in the comm course and did absolutely the bare minimum). Anyways, in January when I started only seeing him Tuesdays and Thursdays (at 2:30pm, ps... awesome), the resentment was gone and I actually started notcing myself learning a lot from him. I started becoming less afraid of his intimidating nature and seeing that it was really just a quiet carefree nature that was being misinterpreted as "this guy loves his job and means business". Don't get me wrong, he does love his job. He loves teaching students, he just doesn't necessarily love being bound to the restrictions of the schoolboard. So when I asked to change my subject, the same one that I had been working on for 2 months, to something else he said, whatever you feel better writing about (for the paper I just finished). When I asked for a one-week extension on something he didn't question why I needed it, but trusted that I did need it to make it the best that I could. When I asked for an exemption for a certain presentation for a part of my final grade because my grandmother died, he told me not to worry about it. He also told me if I needed more time to finish my paper I could have it.

I learned the most from him than any other teacher.

Not only did he provide us the respect I believe he actually felt we deserved, but he is an incredibly smart person. I actually feel priviledged to have three whole sections in my five-star notebooks filled with his words.

I learned the most from him than any other teacher.

In general, I believe that we don't learn from a schoolboard regulated syllabus. We don't learn through rules and regulations. We don't learn through a forced nature. We learn through teaching. Transfering information from the learned to the learning, and doing so in a relaxed environment where we aren't afraid to approach the one who is teaching us and ask for understanding is perhaps when we can learn more than from any other teacher. Kid's don't come home from school and say they hate their mean teacher for nothing... they're mean! And the kid in turn probably didn't learn as much as they could have if the mean teacher gave the kid some respect.

That's what it's all about. R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Sing it, practice it.

Figure it out, teachers. This is what the world needs.