Literary Arts Magazine Spring 2010 | Page 52

A Teacher in My Eyes By Najuan Zhang The teacher I am writing about is Ms. Sarah Mitteholzer, who teaches ESL level 7 classes. I was deeply impressed by her charm and kindness when the first time I met her on the registration day last year. Although I heard of a little negative voice about her class before I became her student, the longer I take her class, the more I like her. It is because she always has many flexible teaching methods, and she is a dedicated, kind teacher. The most essential reason that her class is attractive is she always has many kinds of interesting teaching methods. I don‟t know where she has learned those methods and how she redesigns them to fit our class, but the fact is we can learn new knowledge happily and excitedly. For instance, in order to improve our ability of communication and socialization, she let us pretend to attend a cocktail party. Several students volunteered to be the persons who seemed in trouble. Other students needed to meet these people with problems and give some practical advice to console them. This kind of activity is so useful and helpful that I enjoy it very much. Another example, we have had two debates this semester. During the debates, the court cases that Ms. Mittelholzer chose were easy topics, but both have complex situations. The stu- dents were divided into judge, prosecution, defense, and jury. The process included opening argument, rebutting argument, and closing argument. In order to win, we must do a lot of preparative work, list as many as possible supportive viewpoints, assume other side‟s possible points of view, and refute effectively and reasonably. This lively form of studying is quite challenging for us, but we can benefit a lot from it. The most admirable virtue of Ms. Mittelholzer‟s character is her dedication and hard work. First, no matter what time the students come to school, she always enters into our classroom very early and prepares everything. Second, she usually lays stress on teaching us how to write good essays. Only several days after we submit our assignments, we can get our essays back with her very detailed corrections and comments. Sometimes, she would like to spend three hours or more to prepare some cards or material for our in-class activities of the next day. Because of it, my heart is filled with thanks for her. 51