3 fold mission of a teacher - insite and venting on teaching

I think teachers have a 3 fold mission:
1 - To Teach
2 - To Inspire/encourage
3 - To Prepare
These hit me really hard the other day because I've reflected on the teachers I learned a lot from and the teachers I didn't learn anything from and these 3 things are what really sets them apart.

To Teach - Specifically the things the students expect from the class. There is nothing I hate more in school than to sign up for a class and then find out the class isn't following the course requirements. Happened to me in a Book of Mormon class. When you sign up for a Book of Mormon class you expect to spend a lot of time studying the Book of Mormon. We read maybe 30 verses from it the entire semester. The remaining time we read from the old testament and the doctrine and covenants. If a teacher is not going to teach what the course info says he will teach than the teacher either needs to change the course info or stop teaching the subject. The teaching methodology isn't as important to me as teaching what you say you'll teach, because if a student is not learning what he/she felt they signed up to learn, the student will stop paying attention to the class. I do however believe that the teacher should enjoy what they are teaching. There are a lot better paying jobs out there and if a teacher doesn't enjoy what they're doing, that teacher needs to do something else for the benefit of everyone.

To Inspire/Motivate: The best teachers I've seen have been those who made their students want to learn and know more. There's usually some anticipation "I can't wait for friday's class when we learn about ...". The teacher may not be best friends with the students, but he/she should know all the students by name and be interested in the progress of the students. When a teacher is excited about my progress I'm more excited about going further in my studies. When a teacher encourages me to do some difficult assignment I'm more likely to get it done on time and with a better outcome. When a student likes a teacher the student yearns for praise, for recognition, not to boast or brag, but because a pat on the back physically, mentally, and with real excitement is better than a candy bar any day... though candy bars are good too.

To Prepare: I feel a purpose of teachers are to prepare students for what is coming next. If a first grade teacher is not preparing students for the second grade I don't feel he/she is doing their job. Elementary school teachers should prepare students for middle school, middle school for high school, high school for college and college for the work force. But there is more to it in high school than simply preparing students for college. I feel high school is where students really need to get an idea of the possibilities that are out there. I think schools need to do better at preparing high school students to select a major by introducing them to more subjects. I've never been a fan of the rediculously large number of required courses that high schools require because of those classes most do not prepare the students for college. I think the individual subjects are important, but not so important that a student should have 4 years of history, 4 years of english/writing, and 4 years of science. I would put math up there, but I do feel that math is so widely used in college that a student should have gone through everything needed before pre-calculus before they graduate. But even that is 3 years for most. In college you are required to take a certain number of general credits, and I'm fine with that, in fact I think it's wonderful, but it's only 1/3 of your overall credits. In high school that percentage is more like 3/4ths of your classes are general required classes, most of which you'll forget before the next semester starts. If a high school's purpose is to prepare students for college, where 2/3rds of your classes are geared towards a specific goal (teaching, programming, electrical engineering) and the courses specific to that purpose (certain math and writing skills), why don't we do more of that in high schools? Is it so incredibly important that a student memorize all the rivers, counties, mountain ranges, and lakes in Oregon? Are students ever going to be hired as an electrician because they were able to memorize the names of every signer of the Constitution and identify from which state the representative came from? I believe we do need to make our students well rounded, and I don't think we should ignore these classes all together, but I do think we should do more college preparation, and I don't feel that the number of history and geography courses most high schools require does that.Of the 2 history courses I took at BYU, none of the information touched upon previously learned ideas in school. Most of the names were not taught in high school. If the courses are not building upon that which was already learned, then was the previously learned information important enough for college prep?