[Whistleblower]

I never really concentrated at Secondary School with my teachers but recently have started to realise the effort and commitment they put into their lessons. They also worked incredibly hard and admire their effort.

However, having graduated from Higher Education not so long ago I have some idea who my favourite teacher was in Uni. I remember this Course Leader that taught my cross-cultural management module of my degree and helped us a lot during the year. He worked incredibly hard and have to say put 150% into his lessons. I recognised that he prepared his lessons weeks in advanced and knew the curriculum. Nonetheless, he was an academic but knew how to communicate complex cultural theories in a way students would understand. Furthermore, he created a booklet complete with the most important readings for the module. This was really invaluable and helped me get throught the course.

This really inspired me that good teachers were out there and really helped you get through the course. Obviously there were teachers that just turned up taught their powerpoint slides for an hour and then went to their next class to regurgitate their powerpoint slides.

The teachers that helped students no matter the question, the teachers who prepared their classes well and inspired a sense of interest and the teachers who didn't teach but shared their knowledge are the teachers that I remember most. Student centred, not teacher centred. This is what I try to incorporate in to each class.

However, there are the really bad teachers that I remember thinking, "If I am a teacher in the future, I will not be like him/her". But my absolute worst teacher was my A-Level teacher for English Literature. He was an alcoholic and used to dissapear for his bottle and then stride into class declaring the class was hot and sweaty, even if outside was cold or snowing, and resulted opening the window to get rid of the alcoholic aromer. He predicted that my final mark/grade would be a "C" for English Literature but he didn't see the truth, that I was struggling and got an "N" mark a near pass which is a fail basically. I think if I took A-Levels again, I could probably get some decent marks but the teachers didn't really motivate me and at the age of 16-18 I was more interested in other things, especially, my then new hobby, the pub. However, it is interesting that I never really done well with English before University but since graduating and I am more and more interested in languages as well as teaching English. This is a classic example that you cannot judge a person on their education but on their achievements out of school as well as their employment experience.

Next person, who was your favourite and worst teacher?