Education Autobiography

Throughout my 15 years of schooling in New Jersey I have witnessed many different

teaching styles. Many of these styles have had a positive effect on my fellow students and I,

however many also have seemed to tarnish the profession. It is a wonderful experience being a

student with many years of observing teachers under his belt. It is even more wonderful taking a

course to take note of teaching methods used. In my years of schooling I have had a few teachers

stand out due to how they taught courses. The three main teachers who stood out to me were Mr.

Strungis and Mr. Huntington from Bridgewater-Raritan High School (BRHS) and a professor

from RVCC who I feel tarnished the profession.

Mr. Strungis has functioning teaching methods. Mr. Strungis is a computer aided design

teacher who takes his passion and teaches it. On the first day of class with him, he immediately

tells his students that this class of his is an elective. By informing them it is a class they choose

to be in he hopes to weed out any students looking for an easy A. This is one of the flaws of his

methods. He comes off a bit aggressive. The most affective part of his teaching methods was

how he set up class time. A typical class is about half lecture and half work. He will go through

the drawing or instructions for a project visually and verbally, then lets his students try it on their

own while providing assistance. Sometimes Strungis was real busy helping students so some of

my fellow students and I would also walk around and help. Foster (1994) stated, “not long after

Sputnik, Jones noted that group activity was becoming prevalent in industrial education.”

Essentially Strungis was supporting working together not only for his benefit, but for the class’s

benefit. Over all I believe he is a decent teacher who has functioning teaching methods.

Moving on to one of Strungis’ colleagues, Mr. Huntington. Huntington is a woodshop

and electronics teacher who is also in charge of stage crew at BRHS. He teaching methods differ
from Strungis’ and accept students into his classes. Being an industrial arts teacher, his classes

are mostly students working with assistance from him. He will lecture for one class and then

usually will not lecture again until the end of a project. This lets students work at their own pace

to complete a project by a dead line. In his intro to electronics course he taught students

electronics as well as some residential electrical. This is where my idea of being a teacher came

from. It was my junior year of high school and I was sitting in a chair at the front of the room

next to him while he was teaching. It just happened to be during his residential electrical unit.

Working as an Electrician’s Helper for the past few years had educated me decently in the

subject matter and I found myself adding information into his lecture to fill in the gaps. Coming

from the electrical field where I started at the bottom I had some information not found in the

books or low voltage electrical field in which he is experienced in. Even though there were gaps,

he was doing a decent job helping students learn what is really in their walls at home. This unit

ties right into what the authors of “The Future of Engineering Education” say. The authors of

this article talked about of how “professors have been told…by the Accreditation Board for

Engineering and Technology that we must…teach more about “real-world” engineering (Felder

& Woods & Stice & Rugarcia 2000).” I feel that Huntington is doing exactly that and teaching

students skills that can resurface at home. Huntington also helped students eager to learn about

set design for BRHS’s theater program. I took advantage of that and was able to go from

following his design to improving his design and teaching fellow students how to build it. Over

my four years in high school watching his teaching methods; I feel his methods function more

successfully than Strungis’ and help his students better their knowledge of basic hand tools in

shop and basic electrical.

 Unlike Strungis and Huntington, the professor that I had for a college course upset my

view for educators. Up until college I had some teachers everyone hated. These were teachers

who, looking back now, were passionate about their subject. Their students just did not share in

their love for math, writing, history, or whatever subject it was. I will not mention the name of

the professor or the name of the course due to that fact that I do not want to single them out. The

professor tarnished the education profession by bringing their political views into the class.

Everyday it was something referring to her pollical party or talking about obscene actions in the

professor’s life. This professor did not stop trying to push their political views on the class. As

Hess (2005) stated, “Embedded in most approaches is a focus on encouraging the analysis and

critique of multiple perspectives on how the issue should be resolved.” Obviously this professor

does not use a common approach. One day the professor thought it was necessary to talk about

road rage. Most would think this is a decent topic, but the professor found a way to make it

inappropriate. After admitting to having road rage one day, the professor then spoke how once

they called the police and said that the person that cut them off on the road was waving a gun out

the window. The story did not end there; The professor told the class that they followed the car

until the police pulled them over just to watch. This was one of the many stories told that made

me appall that professor. Unfortunately it has effected my view of the class. When I hear the

subject the professor taught I think of them. This was a good example of an awful teaching

method. I now keep in mind that anything differing from the course material has to be related

and nothing controversial to be said.

Over my 15 years I have witnessed many teachers similar to Strungis and Huntington

who are passionate and help students learn. I have witnessed hated teachers who are passionate

and lack the students effort. Fortunately I have only witnessed one bad egg and it was in college
when I was mature enough to deal with it. Over all 15 years of different teachers has definitely

opened my eyes to different teaching methods and styles.

 References

Felder, R. M., Woods, D. R., Stice, J. E., & Rugarcia, A. (2000). The future of engineering

education II. Teaching methods that work. Retrieved from

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Felder/publication/2628093_The_Future_

Of_Engineering_Education_Ii_Teaching_Methods_That_Work/links/54b7e5c00cf28fac

ed60c579.pdf

Foster, P. N. (1994). Technology Education: AKA Industrial Arts. Retrieved from

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v5n2/foster.jte-v5n2.html

Hess, D. E. (2005). How do teachers' political views influence teaching about controversial

issues?. Retrieved from

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA128604238&sid=googleScholar

&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=fulltext&issn=00377724&p=AONE&sw=w&authCount=1&i

sAnonymousEntry=true