School is a part of everyone's life at some point or another. Whether you only went to high school, junior high, or to college, it is something that everyone has done at some point. I have been in school for most of my life, so far, and during that time I have had a variety of teachers. Some of the teachers I had encouraged me to think on my own, and some required me to memorize vast amounts of data in order to reproduce that data on tests. Which teachers I learned the most from is hard to say. But I do know that I have always thought teachers are people who hold absolute power over you, after all they hold the key to whether you pass or fail. Because of this, I don't think I have ever been absolutely truthful in anything I have ever said in a paper or class discussion, because I was worried it wouldn't be what the teacher wanted me to say. Is this fair? Is this what the relationship should be between teachers and students should be? Should students feel so overwhelmed by the power that teachers hold, that they can't stand up for what they believe or what they feel? If not, then what can teachers do to get rid of this issue of power, and encourage students to really speak their mind freely? Or can a teacher have both power and the ability to get their students to freely speak their mind?

In Lynne Cheney's essay PC:Alive and Entrenched, she talks about the relationship between students and teachers, and how teachers use their power to push their own beliefs and ideas. She states various examples of how teachers in freshman English composition classes, use this class to push their own feminist beliefs. A quote from a student stated, "My professor......is a feminist and she incorporates her ideas and philosophy into into her grading scale."(Cheney 114). Another student complained that she was not being taught writing like she expected in a composition class, and the teacher stated, "Minnie's tuition dollar is buying plastic surgery, not literacy"(114). To me, this is a blatant misuse of power. When a student signs up for a composition course, they should get what they pay for.

"Students rely on teachers to give them a complete view of controversial issues, not a partial one based on their preferences. "When the teacher professes opinion as fact, subjective comments and definitions as the truth,"Colitas wrote, "the contract [between teacher and student] is violated." (Cheney 113).

Students, especially freshmen students in college, believe that teachers tell the truth, that they know what they are talking about. Therefore they are apt to believe what they are being told. Teachers know this, and in the instances that Cheney describes, they use this to push their own agendas. Cheney doesn't limit this discussion to simply to freshmen comp classes, but discusses how this happens in other parts of the curriculum as well. In women's studies classes, this type of thing happens as well. At numerous colleges " students were encouraged to talk about their personal experiences of oppression and their emotions about being oppressed, rather than consider the status of women in any objective fashion."(Cheney 115). This is just another example of a teacher's abuse of power. By making women feel oppressed about their status, and having to talk about it, they are pushing their own agenda. What if you are a woman who does not feel oppressed, who does not have a story about oppression to tell? Are you going to tell the truth, or lie because it's what the teacher wants to hear? As Karen Lehrman stated, she

"quickly discovered that the way to get A's [in a feminist anthropology class] was to write papers full of guilt and angst about how I'd bought into society's definition of womanhood and now I'm enlightened and free." (117).

In Christian Zawodniak's essay, Teacher Power, StudentPedagogy, he talks about a teacher who is totally opposite than those Cheney talked about. "Jeff" is the teacher of a freshman English class that Zawodniak is taking. Instead of talking and pushing his agenda on his students, Jeff left the talking up to them and talked very little himself.She describes him,

" I liked Jeff from the start because of his style. Dressing casually and sitting on a table cast him in the role of "outsider." Jeff didn't follow the rules; he questioned them. He seemed to refute the formal power teachers usually show by dressing up, or by standing behind a podium giving a lecture." (Zawodniak 126).

"Jeff's pedagogy, as I experienced it, was to interfere as little as possible with class activities, leaving the students to run the class. He gave prompts, but once conversation started, he didn't speak Rather, he would sit there, looking at us or into space, and we would talk and then look at him, looking for some kind of guidance. There was a lot of silence. I didn't think it was good silence usually, but the silence of our uncertainty, intimidation, and confusion"(127).

Right away you can see this style of teaching is radically different than what Cheney talked about. However, it doesn't seem from Zawodniak's description of his teaching style, that is was the best method either. There needs to be some guidance, some method of teaching going on. The fact is that Jeff wasn't just laid back, he also judged the students quite harshly considering he did nothing really in the form of guidance. "We could speak our minds, but he was still the guard of knowledge, evaluating our responses, rather than encouraging further dialogue." (128). In a way, this is how he retained his power. He even once stated; " I'll probably have to help some of you more than I want to." (Zawodniak 125 ). This isn't what you expect a teacher to say. Isn't the job of the teacher to help? Jeff's style of teaching isn't what one normally expects. Most teachers give guidance, or tell you what to think or what to write about. Zawodniak didn't really agree with his method of teaching. While it seemed like he was cool at the beginning, it turned out that laid back isn't a real good quality to have in teacher, at least not as laid back as he was. Zawodniak states,

"Despite Jeff's belief that he should vacate the class in order to bring out student voices, this paradox remains: students must have active teacher involvement at the core of any student-centered classroom. Teacher involvement is the key not only to starting conversations, but also to guiding them along their meandering paths."(130).

Looking at these two essays, it is hard to tell exactly what the right method of teaching is. On one hand you have teachers who are power hungry and into pushing their own beliefs and agenda. On the other hand you have a teacher who gave up all his power, and didn't give enough guidance in order to help students learn on their own. Which is the right way? To tell you the truth, I have never had any teachers who were like the ones in the essays I talked about before. I would say those teachers were at the extreme ends. I would like to look at some of the teachers I have had during my years in college, and try to determine what the relationship should be between teachers and students.

Since I have a concentration in science, I have obviously taken a lot of science classes. In science, there really isn't a whole lot of room for interpretation. When the teacher tells you something is true,you pretty much believe them. However, I had this one science class where the teacher lectured, but then gave us a chance to apply our knowledge through the papers we would write. I had a great deal of respect for him, because he was very much like you picture a college professor to be. He was very knowlegeable, always prepared, and dressed very nicely. His views were not forced upon me, he simply told things how they were. I learned so much from him, and his style of teaching.

Another teacher that comes to my mind is my Children's PE teacher. I learned so much from her. Her teaching style was quite different than that of my science teacher. Her method was laid back, easy going, but she was still able to get the message across. She taught through hands on experiences, and stories about her experiences as a teacher. Since this is what I want to do, I could identify with her. She also seemed to love teaching and that came across in her teaching style. She made it fun for me to learn.

Although these two teachers had very different teaching styles, I learned a lot from both of them. What does this say about what style of teaching works best? I think the thing that stands out in both these teachers,and in any of the teachers I have ever learned from, is that they seemed to care, not only about what they taught, but also about whether or not their students did well. This is key to the relationship between students and teachers. There has to be give and take. The student must put forth the effort to learn, and the teacher must put out the effort to teach.The teachers I have learned the most from are the ones who put out the effort, who I felt really cared about me as a person and my success here in school. Now, I have had plenty of teachers who did not care, who simply came because that's what they were paid to do, lectured for the hour and a half, and that was it. Maybe I learned something from this method, but it was nothing even close to what I learned from the teachers who took the time to make sure everything they said was understood, and the time to talk to me if I didn't understand.

Teachers need to be able to get their point across without forcing their views onto their students. When this is done, as in the examples from Cheney, students don't learn, they simply tell he/she want they want to hear to get the grade. This isn't teaching, because no one is learning. Those teachers need to realize that they are influential, and maybe by stating their views in a more subtle way they can teach and still get their point across. The other extreme, as in the example from Zawodniak, turned out to be a bad teaching method as well. Even though he was laid back and tried to make students learn by discussion, he was not a good teacher because he failed to the students the support they needed.

The relationship between students and teachers should be somewhere in the middle between Cheney and Zawodniak. Teachers should share their knowledge and views, but also give students the opportunity to think on their own about what this information means to them. There needs to be a give and take relationship, with the students playing as important of a role as the teachers. Often I got to classes only to find half the students talking or sleeping or not participating in class. I can imagine this would be frustrating to a teacher who is actually trying to teach. The teacher/student relationship is much like a friendship or romantic relationship, it doesn't work if both people don't put an effort into it. If both parties participate, and put their all into it, then teachers will be able to teach and students will learn.

Cheney, Lynne. "PC:Alive and Entrenched."The Presence of Others. Eds. Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. New York:St. Martins Press, 1997

Zawodniak, Christian. "Teacher Power, Student Pedagogy." The Presence of Others. Eds. Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. New York:St. Martins Press, 1997