How much I get out of school depends on the quality of my teachers.

I completely disagree with this. People like to use cop-out reasons for their personal laziness. If you want to get a good grade, if you want to improve, if you want to learn something new, it doesn't matter who is teaching you, you will listen carefully, think about what is being said or shown to you and sift it through your own discriminations. After you have done all this, you will learn something new. This is true of every class any person will ever take. Teachers certainly have the ability to improve or hinder their students, but it is an individual responsibility of every student to pressure themselves to learn.
This cop-out is not used only in regard to teachers, I have heard it used multiple times in regard to church services. Many times a friend has said to me, "I didn't get anything out of the sermon this morning, Pastor didn't do a very good job." But the thing is, it doesn't even matter if what he is saying is boring or not, if this person REALLY wanted to get something out of what our pastor was saying, he would have tried to read between the lines, or would have been less distracted. It's amazing how one person can say that a sermon was awful and another person say it was awesome. It is all based on desire and perspective. If I want to learn something new, even if what is being talked about is a sensitive issue to me, or if the topic is not easily applied to me, I can still take it and use it SOMEHOW, it is not the giver, but the receiver that must decide what they will take and reject.