Mrs. Zappia is an art teacher at Struthers High School. She teaches freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors, which gives her special insight into student’s behavior across the grade levels. Being a relatively laid back teacher, Mrs. Zappia wants her students to have good behavior in return.
During her many years teaching art at Struthers, Zappia believes students have been getting worse in terms of behavior and attention span. This is shown in her classrooms with an increase in classroom disruption, cell phones in the classroom and an overall lack of care on the part of the students.
Zappia, although being known as a “Chill Teacher” thinks that students should try their best to be “Chill Students.”
“A good student for me is someone that comes in, can follow directions and work on their assignments for an appropriate amount of time,” said Zappia.
She thinks that both students and teachers should be putting in effort to make each other’s lives easier. It is a two way street in her classroom; she shows her students respect and lenience and would like the same in return.
The art teacher never tries to fail her students, although in her opinion, there are some teachers who do.
“I personally want students to succeed but I believe that there are teachers out there, who do want to see students fail,” she says.
Effort is the main thing that matters in her opinion. Her favorite thing to see is a student that comes to class with an open mind that is ready to learn. Her least favorite kind of student is one who does not even give minimum effort.
The experienced teacher thinks that art as a subject lets her see her student’s true selves.
“I think art lets me see a different side of students, with the amount of expression that the subject requires, I can really see who students are as people,” said Zappia.
