Lydia Yuknavitch, Walter Shriner and Ellen White: Congratulations on being the next line of distinguished teachers.

You help set a standard, a level of instruction and humanity that is both inspiring and sought after by students and colleges across the board. Through your efforts and care, learning at MHCC is unique, fulfilling.

We want more of you, more devoted enlighteners. We are the next wave of leaders, teachers, doctors and other countless, needed professionals and community members. But with this desire to maintain the quality students are blessed with, there comes the following realization: we need less apathetic floaters.

Across this campus are instructors who sacrifice their time, energy and sanity so they can teach. This group is deserving of pay increases and sports cars.

Teachers outside this group are undeniably needing of a reality check.

Some students have probably found themselves sitting in a classroom as a surge of enlightenment buzzes through their brain. This is a good thing, something many students miss out on while taking classes from the other kind of teacher: the one who ceases to care.
New instructors are learning their trade, developing a sense of style. It’ll come, and when it does, there’s a good chance they’ll embody the “feel” students crave.

Other instructors, some students feel, have lost that “style.” It’s understandble if they have. These teachers have done their job day-in and day-out for years, spending their energies by the truckload. Eventually it can get old, and it shows. But where should we draw the line when we’re being failed by apathy?

Every student pays the same amount of money to take a class, regardless of who’s teaching a particular section. Factor in the quality issue, and it seems as though some students are getting a better deal.

There’s no easy way to gauge this slide into medocrity, no clear, reliable method of rating a teacher’s style like consumers can rate a hotel or a president. And MHCC probably wouldn’t provide that information via the catalog or schedule of classes.

Here’s a challenge: Yuknavitch, Shriner and White are this year’s examples to teachers. Follow their lead. Every student deserves the best quality from class to class. It’s up to the teachers who are sliding to answer the call. You have the potential. Find it.