Sidwell Friends
Many students believe teacher preferences should have a place in course selection, while others think this would lead to biased selection.
Sidwell Friends is known for offering its students many rigorous courses to choose from. In the course catalog, the administration only provides students with an overview of the class curriculum, revealing the course’s teacher when schedules are released over the summer. This poses an issue for multiple reasons, mainly because students are not fully aware of what they are enrolling in until far too late.
However, Academic Dean Nikolin Eyrich states that factoring teacher preference into course selection might not be feasible, as “[w]hen students express their preferences for classes for the next year, teachers are not assigned yet. There might be a pattern of certain faculty members teaching certain classes, but that could always change. I always encourage students to sign up for the classes they’re interested in, not to choose classes based on who they think the teachers might be.”
Nevertheless, every student learns differently, and teachers also have differing styles of presenting content and information to their classes. It is unfair that two students putting equal effort into a class and deserving of the same grade perform differently just because they have been placed with a teacher whose teaching style is incompatible with their learning style. To maximize every student’s performance, Sidwell must allow teachers to make their own preferences during course selection.
When asked about the benefits of allowing teacher preference during course selection, freshman Erykah Poole stated, “If you know how the teacher presents information, then it is easier for the students to learn.”
Second, because students select their teachers, they would find greater joy and academic success in their classes. An essential part of the classroom experience is the professional relationship students build with their teachers. Of course, having the skill to create that type of relationship with anyone in a professional setting is crucial. However, that skill should not be the students’ primary goal when they enter a classroom. Especially when students are enrolled in more demanding classes, a pre-existing relationship with a teacher or the ability to have teachers with more compatible teaching styles would be beneficial.
When asked about the opportunity to select teachers, sophomore Zoe Gibson-Johnson said, “I think from what I’ve seen, I personally like to choose teachers based on what I think we can have in common because it is a lot easier to talk to teachers that way.”
Next, teachers have a lot of leniency outside of how they present information. Sophomore Adonna Dawit, described the disadvantages of not allowing students to select their teachers by saying, “If I’m taking the same course as someone in my grade, it should have the same difficulty, or else, the grade that we get is not accurate to our abilities. Colleges do not look at anything aside from the course you took and your grade. For example, last year, two of the Math I teachers had different policies about what would be dropped at the end of the year which gave some students an unfair and unnecessary advantage.”
If students can easily communicate with and establish relationships with their teachers, their participation and overall performance will improve. Sophomore Nylah James shared an experience where teaching style positively influenced her education, stating, “For example, my freshman year I had a teacher that let us write something down and hand it in later instead of speaking in class for participation, allowing other students to build confidence in their ability to participate.”
Some argue that students should have experience collaborating with and learning from people with different learning or teaching styles before entering college. However, this logic is erroneous because in college, students can select which courses to take through detailed reviews of the professors. From then on, if the real world poses similar issues, that is a systemic issue that must be worked on, not an excuse for Sidwell to commit the same error.