A Teacher’s Perspective
The school year is half-over now, so I decided to look into which high school classes teachers find the hardest to teach. To figure that out, I questioned a few teachers, each teaching different classes. Some teachers gave me the expected response: AP {class}, but one or two managed to surprise me with an answer from out of the blue.
Mr. Lynn has been teaching for four years and teaches high school business classes: Consumer Education, AP Economics, Accounting, and Intro to Business. He said that the hardest class he teaches is AP Econ. The reasons he gave include having little or no prior knowledge to make learning it easier, difficult concepts, and vocabulary that appears very rarely in most people’s day to day life. He concluded with a statement about how well AP classes prepare students for college-level courses.
Mrs. Cohen shared an interesting most difficult class to teach: Geometry. She has taught for 25 plus years, and still teaches Algebra 2, Precalculus, and Calculus, along with Geometry. Her reason for Geometry being the hardest class she teaches is that it is so different from all the other classes. She also added that taking Precalculus and AP Calculus, the next hardest classes to teach, are a good way to prepare for college, which I agree with.
Mr. Fry had a more traditional answer to what class he finds the hardest to teach: AP Literature. He teaches English 9, English 10, AP Literature and Composition, Creative Writing, and Journalism. He says the most difficult class he teaches is AP Literature and Composition because it is designed to be equivalent to a college freshman course, so the level of literary analysis and writing is simply much higher. He says the second hardest class to teach is Creative Writing because he “basically [has] to reteach them to write in “a different style of writing”, referencing how most classes do not require writing forms of literature, such as poetry. Mr. Fry has been an English teacher for the last thirteen years.
Mrs. Hutchcroft has been teaching for 22 years and currently teaches social studies classes: Psychology and Sociology, and history classes: U.S. History, and World History. She also teaches Government and Geography to Juniors. Interestingly, she said that the most difficult class for her to teach is World history. Reasons for this include, large source materials, limited time, and having to begin from scratch because she only started teaching it last year. I thought it would be Geography, but, though she had trouble with taking that class herself, it is still easier for her to teach than World History.
It is interesting and different to consider what a teacher, someone most students take for granted, finds difficult to teach. Considering their point of view can increase our recognition of our teachers and their efforts.