Student Voice: Teachers and Students

By Kimberly Chouang
Staff Writer | The Pacific Times

I think that teachers around the world should be paid more. From what I have experienced with my past teachers, they end up facing so much more than just teaching their students.

“Sometimes we work 60 plus hours a week, 12 hours a day,” said NP3 high school biology teacher Nida Qasmi.

They could deal with late students, being short on immediate supplies, and interruptions while teaching on a daily basis. Of course, not all teachers are like this. There are some that are able to handle these problems and keep on teaching the class, but teachers are human after all and like us, they can’t deal with too much in a day, yet they still plan their lessons and grade work.

“Some people might think that teachers make enough because we get summers off, but people don’t realize how much time and effort we put into lesson planning, grading, and after school activities,” added Qasmi.

What am I saying really? Am I saying that teachers should be paid more? Or that our job as students should be to learn during class? I’m guessing that this can go both ways. Teachers work hard for their students to get something out of their lessons, but even those don’t go to plan sometimes. I’ve seen disruptions that take away the learning time in class. I want to know why some of my classmates end up stopping the class from learning when they need to know these kinds of things too.

“I do believe that teachers at other schools may not be paid for what they’re worth. I find this a travesty. Teachers hold the keys to our future. They should be valued no matter the cost,” said NP3 high school science teacher Robin Jones.

Maybe teachers worldwide deal with different types of disruptions that, by the end of the day are just little things that add to their stress. I think that when people apply to be a teacher, they have different hopes that they hope to reach. I’m pretty sure that when they are faced with teaching the high school, things could go downhill and with the ‘troublemakers’ or students who disrupt or stop a class, they couldn’t be further from reaching their personal hopes for being a teacher.

This has been acknowledged at our school Jones said, “At our school, we are actually paid more than other schools, NP3 has made it a priority that teachers are valued and are paid better than other schools in our district.”

Teachers that have to deal with this kind of problem every day deserve respect from their students. I get wanting to catch up with friends, but really, to get a lesson going, a teacher uses up around eight minutes of your time before you end up going off on your own.

From my experience, I believe that teachers that have respect from their students, and they are able to calm their students down, end up with a better class overall. The class learns and the teacher doesn’t need to deal with too many problems and teachers get paid for what they’re worth. It’s simple.