Chapter 1: Stoking the Fires Within

This chapter was about attitude and the motivation of why teachers teach. An important point the chapter made was that adolescents cannot separate a teacher from the teacher’s attitude; the two are one in the same. This is important to recognize when working with students of that age. A teacher’s attitude every day in class can have a significant impact on the students’ ability and willingness to learn. The focus should be on the students and their needs in order to learn. Personal connections between the teacher and middle school students are an emphasis in this chapter.

This affects me as a future teacher because I could possibly teach middle school in the future and I learned a lot about students of that age group in this short chapter. I am by nature a sarcastic person and sometimes my humor is not understood by my peers. The author of this chapter stated that he needed to be careful not to offend his students by careless comments. This is hugely important for me because a careless comment that I let out without thinking could shut a student down permanently from learning anything more from me. So this chapter was very helpful to me in that respect.