Nel Venzon

Although AP Bio is quite fun, fascinating, and easy if you can handle the amounts of assignments given to you. I would like to make comments on the teacher that teaches AP Bio. Dr. Venzon is a very interesting teacher. He takes the time to help students before school, during recess and lunch, and especially after school. He has morally supported massive amounts of students, and does deserve the acknowledgement for his merits. However, Dr. Venzon is not that great of a teacher. Yes Dr. Venzon takes the time out of his life to help many students, and has sacrificed years of getting such position in AP Bio (head of AP Bio in the DOE, and earned a Presidency Award for his Great Teaching in STEM), but he does not take the time to help students that are truly suffering in content. The content of AP Bio is a lot, 8 units to cover, and the labs we have to take part in. The fact that Dr. Venzon has earned a Presidency Award for his great teaching skills questions me because his so-called "teaching skills" are very poor. He is a young person, and still needs to learn how things flow, and what he needs to focus on right now is proper teaching. Dr. Venzon subsidizes his teaching with massive amounts of packets called "Reading Guides, " makes us watch videos that don't even help that much if he hasn't given an in-depth lecture about a certain topics, makes us make figures on processes that don't even help in the first place, and probably thinks that his lectures are actual lectures, when in reality, it's just calling on classmates, and assessing their knowledge. When he "assesses their knowledge, " not only does he embarrass someone for their incompetence, he indirectly criticizes them by saying "this is why we should all do ____. " Quite concerning how he gives us constructing criticism, when he himself needs to establish some self realization. This self realization should be "Oh, my students aren't performing well, it's probably my teaching, so I should work harder so I can maximize my students' scores. " But no, I can assume that he probably thinks it isn't his teaching that is not well, and that it's the students' overall performance. Yes Dr. Venzon has given lectures about certain topics, which is actually when I did my best such as in Water Potential, and Metabolism, but he is lacking the efforts into doing that now. I wish he would teach like a regular Bio teacher where they take the time to actually create a slide presentation about certain functions and processes on a topic, and present it to his students. And he should know when the students don't get it, it's when they get this confused look on their face, which he doesn't notice. And don't get me started on MasteringBiology. MasteringBiology is a website where my classmates, and I go to and are assigned these questions that test our knowledge on the topic we are learning about. I feel like this website is supposed to prepare us for the AP exam, but if he assigns a MasteringBiology, and knows that his students cheat, then maybe he should stop assigning them, and actually teach. But no, here comes to reading guides. The reading guides are literally three-five pages with about 30 questions, that are maximized with "A. B. C. " These reading guides are literally given two or one week prior to the test about the topic. He expects us to know everything about the chapter and the reading guide without actually doing a lecture. I'm not trying to drag down Dr. Venzon, but I just feel like he needs to improve his teaching ethics. There are so many teachers out there that deserve so much recognition for their outstanding teaching, and hard effort in their job, then there's Dr. Venzon, a teacher that literally subsidizes his teaching with mass amounts of class/homework assignments, then expects us to know everything about the topic, and take the test, and pass like it was easy without him teaching. He makes me go through so much stress, as a sophomore, because I literally have to self teach myself every single day about the topic, and I'm getting so tired of it, that I just want to drop AP Bio because of him. There are people who I know that can testify the same thing because they know what it's like to suffer true, improper teaching ethics, and it's just hard to withstand his overbearing ego too. He brags about how he goes through so much suffering, and ends up super successful. Although this may be a sign that I can go through the same thing, why can't he just do us all a favor, and teach, to make our lives easier, and the path to success more accessible? I sort of speak on the behalf of students that can testify the same thing because some may believe that he makes them go through true suffering due to his lack of proper teaching ethics, but they probably counteract these thoughts with his decent personality. I say decent because we have these discussions about the reading guide that was assigned, and yet usually nobody fully understands the concepts, and so he calls on classmates and asks them questions about the content like they would know (they would if they actually went in depth with the reading guide, but mostly our classmates don't want to do this because it literally just adds more stress onto their minds), and if they do not know, he sort of indirectly criticizes the students by saying, "This is why the class should ____, " or "This is why we need to ___. " It's quite funny how he tries to give the students constructive criticism, when he himself needs criticism on his lack of proper teaching, and needs to gain self-realization. As I have said, I'm not trying to drag down Dr. Venzon, but honestly the truth needs to come out. I do believe we are lucky in a way by receiving to periods to go more in-depth with the topics we are learning, but I've noticed he doesn't take advantage of these two periods by actually lecturing. Dr. Venzon lacks self-realization because when his students aren't doing well, he just assigns more and more assignments, or just tries to give extra credit in pity for everyone, which I do think is unfair because these don't help with absolutely anything. He should come to his sense that when his students are performing bad, that he should teach harder. Yes he takes his time out to help students after school, but we have two periods for a reason. We shouldn't be using these periods as time to fill out a reading guide, or draw pictures, we should be using these periods to go in-depth with topics, which he doesn't realize. I do believe these awards are not that quite deserved saying that these assignments that are given hasn't maximized my scores in testing, nor has ever helped with my critical thinking, or literally anything. I really do rely on a regular Bio teacher to teach my AP Bio concepts because of Dr. Venzon's incompetence (Thank you Mr. Jeremy). Overall, yes Dr. Venzon is a good teacher with his sacrifices, and dedication to help students, but he should also be helping his students in class too.