Teachers will agree with me on the fact that in some cases, students develop passion for some subjects and in other situations they dread certain subjects. I would like to analyse the factors that bring about such situations and I also wish to suggest some remedies.

Over the years, I have observed that the way the teacher markets his subject determines whether the students love it or not. When I was at high school level, we had a teacher for Mathematics who used to tell us that none of us could score above eighty percent in his subject. This made us believe that Mathematics was a very difficult subject.

Some of us chose to concentrate more on the subjects that we considered simpler and we gave little attention to Mathematics. I also remember that whenever we scored low marks in Mathematics, the teacher would make queer remarks about us yet we were not low achievers in all the subjects. Whenever it was lesson time for Mathematics, we would attend for formality but our hearts were not with the subject.

To this date, I still wonder why the teacher used such a weird approach to teaching his subject. If the subject had been optional at Ordinary level, I am sure that many of us would have dropped it. He delivered the subject content in a way that did not inspire us at all and whenever he would calculate some questions on the chalkboard, he would do it so fast that we would switch off our minds and just stare at him. I think he always wanted to show us that he knew a lot of Mathematics but he failed to help us learn it.

The teacher who inspired me most at high school level was the one who used to teach us poetry and novels. He made us realise that Literature was an interesting subject which was about human nature. He used to give illustrations that were based on our own experiences and we enjoyed his lessons a great deal. Whenever he missed attending to us due to some unavoidable circumstances, we would feel sad and lonely. He used to involve us in exciting discussions about the set books and we developed passion for his subject. He left a mark on my heart and I attribute my love for Literature to his good style of teaching.

I believe that teachers should be like marketers who use a high sense of creativity to motivate the customers to develop interest in their products and keep buying them. It is pointless to boast to the learners that we are very knowledgeable in our teaching subjects. What is important is for us to motivate them to enjoy learning our subjects by showing them that the subject content is not as hard as they may assume.

We should use the learner-centred approach which empowers learners with skills unlike the teacher-centred approach which portrays the teacher as a know-it-all person who towers above the students and pumps the subject matter into their minds. There are lots of sources of information that learners are exposed to and the teacher’s role should be to stimulate learners to be able to relate what they study in class with what they already know.

Whenever the students score low marks, we should avoid rebuking them as this kills their morale and love for the subjects that we teach. We should instead point out their areas of difficulty and devise ways of helping them to improve. We also have to acknowledge their strong areas and commend them for their effort.

Marketing our subjects to students is something that can enable them to develop positive attitudes towards learning and it can go a long way in promoting hard work and building rapport between students and teachers.

The writer is a teacher