In all of these issues that were given to us, I was most looking forward to this one because of how personal it is to all of us. I can't say that every teacher worries about whether their students like them or not, but I can say that most do.
Looking at good teaching as an either or - do my students want someone who is their friend or their teacher?-is detrimental to teaching. We all know this, we all know there's no one way to teach. We all know that you can have as much teacher education up your sleeves, but when you get into that classroom there will always be circumstances that try us, and test our patience, and make us question whether or not we're goot teachers. In any debate where there are the two extremes that Ben listed, we all know that there needs to be a mixture of both. When we start thinking too far to one side or the other, in anything, we leave important parts of the puzzle out.
The biggest problem that I have in the classroom is discipline. We all know that I tend to be a soft speaker, but that is because I personally do not like my voice when I am trying to speak over people. Also, compared to my co-op who is a baritone, my little voice just does not carry over the students'. I've created a system with an instrument called a Thunder tube, in which I make the sound of the instrument, and they have until that instrument is done playing to quiet down. However, there are some students that consistently talk, because they're just happy energetic kids and they don't remember that just a minute ago I asked them to respect whoever was talking. With these students, I am asking them repeatedly to quiet down and give me their attention, and at the same time I feel like I am making enemies with them. I don't want a silent classroom by any means, I actually like a little chatter as long as it is reflective of what the class is talking about. However, I am so used to college classrooms in which everyone respects their classmates when they are expressing their opinions or sharing their answers, that I expect that same level of respect from my students.
I was talking to one of the "Family consumer science" teachers (a.k.a. Home Economics), about this and she agreed with me that she didn't like her students to feel like they couldn't talk at all. But that there's a thin line between having an open classroom, and losing all control. She said, "If you engage them in learning, it's like an inverse proportion. The more you engage, the fewer instances of discipline there will be. However, no matter what you do, you will never be able to eliminate discipline issues. That's like harnessing the beast." She went on to say, "It's up to the teacher what level of noise will be tolerated in their room. There's organized chaos in some and in others the teachers are willing to give up any control. When the teacher has total control, it stifles creativity. On the other hand, there is little learning that will occur when the teacher loses full control of his or her class. In either situation, only those students who are hungry for knowledge will seek out the information, and they are few and far between."
So when do we stop asking our students to be silent? If their disrespecting the ideas of their students, and not allowing them to share their knowledge then who's learning is stifled? On the other hand, I think we all agree, that we should never retreat to the kind of teacher who requires full control just because she is scared of what will happen if she doesn't.