Anyway, it cannot be worse. In front of the seats stood a big heating stove. Its round sides and top were cherry-red from the head of the fire, and standing around it were the scholars that Laura must teach. In the corner by the stove, stood a small table and a chair. Oh my, I am the teacher.
Teaching is an awesome responsibility.
We teachers are responsible for introducing students to our disciplines. For students who will become majors, we must prepare them well in the fundamentals. For students who will not, our course may be their only exposure to the subject, and their life-long understandings of and attitudes toward statistics or ecology or poetry or politics will be indelibly set by their impressions of the course. We teachers are also responsible for assigning grades, which affect a student's chances for a scholarship or for admission to graduate or professional school. At the end of my first semester, I talked with a distraught student who had earned a D grade.