Desperately waiting for the clock to hit passing period is a very common and upsetting occurrence when lackluster teachers are put in place. Teachers like this often leave an empty or blank feeling as students can not fully immerse themselves in the class. As a student I have had a fair share of this occurrence but a teacher I’ve never had this experience with and instead actually looked forward to having is 11th grade History teacher Mr.Thomas.

Being Present

While most teachers teach by using notes alongside a textbook, Thomas takes a different and immersive approach. Instead of students doing book work by themselves, Thomas takes time to create slideshows with clear and direct information. To go along with the slideshows, Thomas makes study guides and sheets where students fill in the blanks, which will later be used to study for tests. 

Thomas also makes a daily practice quiz (not graded) that is taken at the beginning of class to remind students of what has been taught. After the practice quiz is taken, Thomas takes time to go over the answers and scores to review anything that needs to be.

The approach Thomas takes is so note-worthy because instead of students suffering by doing work alone afraid to ask for help, Thomas is present the entire time and encourages questions with, “What are you curious about today?” segments. During these segments, students are encouraged to ask Thomas questions about the world or history and he will provide an answer. On the off chance that he does not know the answer, the class alongside Thomas and google will figure it out.

Connection 

It’s not just Thomas’ teaching that makes him so admirable but it’s his personality as well. Thomas’ passion for history really shines through his classes and makes the atmosphere of his classroom really memorable and exciting. During his classes he’s never unengaged and is always trying to keep conversations engaging. He also is a metalhead (a fan of heavy metal music) and sometimes incorporates his taste in music into lessons. During our WWI teaching segment he played One by Metallica because it told the unfortunate story of a WWI soldier and really immersed us into our WWI segment. 

A Talk With Mr.Thomas 

To really get a full understanding of Thomas’ teaching it’s obvious one should ask him questions directly. So that’s what I did.

How long have you been teaching? What made you start?

“Since 2007, so sixteen years. What inspired me to start teaching? I wanted to understand why different people around the world lived differently like we are all the same species but why do the people in Iran and North Korea and Canada and Florida all kinda live differently and history was the answer to that question. So I really like to try to understand the world and why it’s like that and why it’s different in some places and that’s what fascinates me about history.”

Did you start teaching the way you teach now? How has it evolved?

“I’ve always been doing the fill in the blanks and the powerpoint thing. It’s changed over time, largely with homework assignments. I started off with like all homework assignments were textbook stuff when I started because that’s what they told us to do. Students hated that so then I started using a lot of assignments based on quotes. So you’re reading what actual people said in history. And the problem with that was that stuff was never on the test. So then I switched over to the study guide thing. So my style hasn’t changed a lot but I think I’ve gotten better at finding the right short phrases to make complicated things easy to understand.” 

How do you think your teaching affects students?

“I mean I hope it makes them think about the big world, the world outside of Turlock. I hope it’s that moment where they start to care and think about the country and the world, and think about life outside of Turlock. I know when I was 16 in highschool, I only thought about what happened here. If you asked me to find Israel on a map I never would’ve been able to do it in my Junior year of highschool.” 

His Impact 

Thomas has proven to be a favorite teacher among Pitman campus because of his personality and passion towards history as proven by his answers. What he does actually invests students and has such an impact as students feel seen. The difference in teaching style is really something to admire.