Editorial: Teachers Can Learn from Students

Due to the numerous surveys and in-class feedback that students are asked to complete, the question of whether teachers take the feedback seriously has arisen. Sometimes the surveys and the ratings of teachers seem useless due to teachers’ unchanging attitudes and the lack of visible changes to their teaching.

Are teachers actually taking students’ feedback seriously? Teaching skills are important, however, these skills only work well when teachers are having a good relationship with students. Some students would complain continuously about teachers’ attitudes and their confusing ways of teaching or missing information that should be taught. These consequences have caused most students to hold a dissatisfying attitude towards their teachers. To improve on this situation, students were sent some surveys to complete.

Not only should teachers take in their feedback seriously, the school should also follow up on their ratings. It is important to know how students are coping with their teachers and how to solve the conflicts between teachers and students. When teachers don’t take in students’ opinions seriously, the school should require teachers to read all pieces of feedback.

In some Hong Kong international schools, teachers either gain or lose salary based on their ratings by students. In this situation, they must read through every student survey to improve on their teaching ability or attitude to earn a higher rating in their next survey. This idea should be taken in by all schools because they require teachers to pay more attention on improving themselves.

Being a teenager, it is hard to ignore certain personal feelings when rating teachers but that does not stop students from rating them. If teachers do not take in the feedback seriously, most students will continue not getting along with their teachers and attend their classes unwillingly. This will not create a good end result for the students’ learning and parents will start commenting negatively towards the school and its teachers.

By completing anonymous surveys and writing short paragraphs, students provide both positive and negative opinions to help teachers improve both their teaching skills and attitudes towards students. The conflict between teachers and students are mostly caused by the lack of communication and too many misunderstandings. Although teaching skills are important, the communication between teachers and students is the most important variable that helps students improve in their academic learning.