Dear ___________,
You were my professor for Psychology 100 last
spring. You were by far the best teacher
I ever had and I wanted to write this letter to you to express my gratitude. When I took my first college level psychology
class at Stonehill College, I received a grade in the lower B range, and I did
not learn anything. The professor that I
had was awful. The lectures that the
professor gave were both confusing and boring. The writing assignments and
tests were all extremely difficult because I felt that I was not learning
anything in class. After my final in that class, I was so thankful I would
never have to take another psychology course again.
Then
I transferred to Southern Connecticut State University my sophomore year and I
found out that I would have to retake PSY100.
My psychology credit from Stonehill College transferred in as PSY210 so
once again I was going to have to take that awful psychology class. I went on
ratemyprofessor.com because if I had to retake the class, I was going to at
least try to take it with a good professor.
I originally signed up to take the class with Bev Lavin. She had a great review and everyone seemed to
love her and her class. On the first day
of my PSY 100 class, her name was not the name written on the board. The name written on the board was yours, and
I am so grateful now that there was a change in professors.
The
main reason why I consider you to be the best teacher I have ever had is
because I still remember almost everything you taught me. The way you conducted your lectures was
amazing. I learned more in your class every Tuesday and Thursday than I did in
a lot of my college classes so far. You
made everything so simple. Every single
big idea, psychologist, theory, etc in psychology you put into words that I
could not only comprehend, but that I could remember. We were responsible for reading the textbook,
which I did, but I did not always understand what I read. Some of the concepts in the textbook were
complicated and confusing. It made it
very hard to relate to. By going to your
class though, everything was put into perspective.
Not
only did you make all of the psychology concepts so simple, you also made them
very relatable. You would use your
children and other life experiences as examples. Also, in class you had us come up with our
own examples. When I am able to relate
something to my own life, I am able to remember it more easily. I was able to recall many psychology concepts
or experiments because I had a real life example to relate them to. In addition to examples, you had us do in
class activities to help us understand different concepts. We did these activities in groups so we could
learn more from our peers and individually.
One activity I can clearly remember was when you were teaching us about
short term and long term memory. First
you gave us a phone number aloud and we had to write down what we
remembered. This had to do with our
short term memory because we can remember seven (plus or minus 2) objects. When you listed more than nine numbers, no
one could remember them all. Then you had us write down as many states as we
possibly could. The people who were able
to write all fifty states did so using a mnemonic device. They learned a song back in elementary school
which helped move the names of the fifty states from their short term memory
into their long term memory. By using
these types of activities and examples in class, the majority of the
information you taught is now in my long term memory.
The
last reason why I believe that you are the best teacher I have ever had is
because I always felt 100% ready for every test in your class. Not only was I able to remember all of the
theories, experiments, terms, etc from the examples, but you made us a study
guide for every test. Most of the
teachers that I have had in college will give out study guides, but never go
over them. They pass them out and it is
your job as a student to work on them and email the professor any
questions. You are the one and only professor
that would actually give us class time to fill in the study guides. Then you would go over the study guide with
us before the end of class. This way we
left class with a study guide that was not only filled out, but filled out with
all of the correct information. I was
able to use the study guide to really review and prepare for the exam. Every test that I took in your class I
received no lower than a 90%. Before the
test, I knew exactly what I needed to study, and during the test I could
remember all of the information we learned.
After
taking your class, I decided to minor in psychology. By having you as my teacher, I went from
hating psychology and thinking it was the worst subject ever, to loving
psychology and realizing that I could actually do well in it. Since your class, I have taken three more
psychology classes and I have really enjoyed each one. I never knew how interesting psychology could
be and how much of an impact it would have on me studying to be an elementary
school teacher. I do have to say that
even though I have enjoyed the other classes, no teacher has had as big of an
impact as you. You are an amazing
teacher and I am so happy that I was able to take at least one class with you
during my time at Southern. You truly
are one of the best teachers that I have ever had.
Sincerely,
Lauren
No comments:
Post a Comment