Category: Caring Teacher

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]According to Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, 20^th century psychologists who are famous for cognitive and moral development theories, acquisition, assimilation, and application of moral values take place alongside the development in cognition. In other words, as an individual matures intellectually, he or she becomes more capable of moral reasoning, implying that one’s quality of thinking, rather than his or her chronological age is a better predictor of moral reasoning and related capabilities.

Qualitative changes that take place in one’s sense of moral values are contingent upon his or her development in cognitive functions. In this sense, understanding cognitive functioning would enhance our understanding and improve our approach to helping students to develop as morally responsible individuals.

Traditional approach

Like everyone else, I studied in a system where moral values were taught once in a week (50-minute period) in a class called “moral education.” Although I looked forward to the classes mainly because the textbooks contained interesting stories of heroes who display excellent qualities, I felt that everyone in the class would have liked to have more of moral education classes. Because of time limits and other reasons, the subject was considered to be less important and failing in it wasn’t a big deal.

In addition, the manner in which the subject matter was delivered was far from being effective. Teachers either read or lectured the stories and asked us what lesson(s) we could generate from them. Somehow, we were expected to become passionate about certain moral values by learning them in an inert manner. Unfortunately, we missed out on seeing how moral values permeate every aspect of life. We were not allowed the opportunities to explore moral principles as they relate to other subjects taught in the school. The importance placed on the subject was evidently discouraging.

Brain-friendly values classes

If meaningful connections of facts and ideas are important to effectively learn subjects like science, social studies, and math, the same applies to learning and assimilating moral values. To make values education meaningful, it should not be isolated from the rest of the subjects and the overall experiences at school and life. Ideally, moral values should be the inspirational force behind every teaching and learning that transpires in the school. Values education should not be considered as a non-core (or elective) subject scheduled once in a week. Rather, it should be integrated systematically to reflect real-life application and meaning across the board.

Simple strategies

Moral reasoning is momentously enhanced by providing opportunities to learn and transfer moral values within appropriate real-life contexts. The following strategies could be used to teach moral values in any subject through an integrative model:

1. Presentation of moral dilemma followed by discussion/dialogue about possible solutions, consequences for different decisions and accompanying actions, and reflection about real-life application (e.g. Discussion about ethics in scientific research)
2. Debate about moral issues – debates help students to prepare for morally challenging situations before they actual encounter them, hence preparing them to be ready with unyielding moral decisions – this prevents individuals from giving in to the pressures of the moment, the reason responsible for most white collar crimes by highly educated professionals (e.g. “Should we continue manufacturing luxury cars?” – in the context of our moral responsibility to preserve energy for future generations)

While utilizing these strategies, a teacher should ensure that:

1. students’ behaviors are separated from ‘who they are’  preventing the teacher and students from becoming judgmental about each other’s moral decisions
2. an unconditionally accepting classroom environment is created to facilitate genuine and open discussion/dialogue
3. he or she shares personal experiences to encourage students to do the same and increase authenticity in learning moral values

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Although the 21^st century man is supposed to be living in a small, flat world, where distance and time are no barriers to forging relationships and engaging in meaningful conversations with people around the world, a huge number of individuals still feel lonely and left out. Why is it that advancement in communication technology has not assisted in enhancement of human relationships? Why is it that instead of bringing people together, global development has taken them further apart?

The loneliness plague

We fully understand that “no man is an island” and that humans are social beings. However, statistics indicate that loneliness is rampant in our society today among all levels of the social ladder, especially among school-goers. Loneliness is a feeling that one gets in the absence of meaningful interactions. It is usually accompanied by boredom and aimlessness. Subsequently, a lonely individual feels discouraged to carry out his everyday tasks and routines because of the loss of meaning. Eventually, the lonely individual blames himself for his weakness. He finds that others respond to his loneliness with irritation and a lack of empathy, and is further led into isolation, sometimes chronically so.

Possible cause

Living in a fast-paced world where quality equals efficiency, humans have invented myriad of ways to shorten operations to maximize production. By doing so, we have deprived ourselves of many the opportunities to socialize and acculturate with other humans. For example, in the agrarian society, harvesting was a great get-together time where the whole village comes out to help members of the farming families. Once completed, there were celebrations, sharing, talking, singing, dancing, story telling, etc.  in short, there were lots of meaningful interactions among people. Loneliness would have been an alien term for people in such a society. The opposite is true of our society today.

Loneliness in school

Schools are also characterized as fast-paced,  a typical working day starts with a ring of a bell, followed by a tight schedule of teaching and learning of one subject after another (surprisingly, there has never been a period allocated for socializing), short breaks in between classes that are also stressful as children are closely monitored and supervised for wrongdoings, and finally the day ends with a ring of a bell again.

Both teachers and students do not have sufficient time to loosen up and relate to each other as regular humans. They are pre-occupied with playing distinct, highly rigid roles and are constantly anxious about playing their roles well, in order to avoid punishment or other painful outcomes. Unfortunately, schools have always placed greater value on productivity rather than human relationships. This has ushered chronic cases of loneliness into schools. It is not surprising that many students feel isolated and under-perform because they don’t find life particularly meaningful to them. Loneliness is also the major cause of suicide among students, worldwide.

Student advisory

Many progressive schools especially in the United States combat loneliness by providing sustainable emotional support to students through student advisory programs. These schools set aside each week for students to meet one-on-one and/or in small groups with advisors (volunteer teachers, who act as a mentors) to focus on character and civic development, as well as discuss their personal and academic goals. Students are given sufficient opportunities to talk about day-to-day issues, define their values, develop trusting relationship with adult advocates, sharpen communication skills, participate in service-learning projects, and explore what it takes to be one’s best and bring out the best in others, in any circumstance. Deliberately providing meaningful interactions is the best cure for loneliness in school.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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While assessment of student learning provides us with useful information about the amount of learning that takes place on a day-to-day basis, assessing teachers and their effectiveness as instructors remain a challenge. Often, it is taken for granted that student achievement level itself is a sufficient indicator of how well a teacher does his or her job. However, this is a misconception because students’ academic achievement level may be the result of various other factors in addition to the effectiveness of a teacher.

A widespread practice employed to tackle this issue is the use of performance review (usually a year-end exercise) where an administrator evaluates a teacher on a set of pre-determined criteria. This is often a one-time task. But how does one judge the quality of teaching from a single performance measure?

Inadequate evaluation

The year-end, one-time performance review may work well in a factory setting, where superiors could rely on production rate, attendance, and other concrete data to decide on the effectiveness of a worker. However, it does not apply well to teachers who do more than production. Teachers build, empower, engage, stimulate, motivate and inspire students to learn and to reflect on living a good life. Teachers also constantly connect with students through positive and warm relationships. Thus, assessing the quality of teaching demands a more formative, on-going authentic measurement of teacher performances.

Unwanted effects

Teachers experience high levels of anxiety during inspection and evaluation by an administrator. They feel unfairly judged on a single observation and on standards that they themselves are not fully aware of. Many argue that anxiety, nervousness, bad luck, and a variety of other factors ruin the lesson that is being observed. Some teachers say, “He (the supervisor) should have come when I was doing this other lesson earlier in the month; it went so well; today, I blew it all up! I am definitely going to get a bad performance review (sigh).”

Another outcome of a limited observation of a teacher’s teaching capability is the “observer effect” where the teacher and students become unnatural in their behavioral responses on the account of the novelty of being observed by a third person, especially an authoritative figure. Hence, true teaching and learning are rarely observed and evaluated. In the end, the whole process becomes another ritual and requirement to complete paper work and get on with other routines.

Detached observer

Usually, an administrator or a supervisor observing a teacher does it by assuming a non-participatory, completely-detached observer role (e.g. sitting in a corner with an evaluation sheet). What this means is that the supervisor does not take into consideration and/or understand the overall context or processes, relational dynamics, classroom history, socio-cultural experiences of the people, environment, and events being observed. Because of all these and many other flaws, performance reviews fail to accomplish what they were meant to do. At the end of the day, the question of whether or not a teacher is truly effective still remains unanswered.

Paradigm shift

Having identified the weaknesses of performance reviews, it only makes sense for us to think of and utilize a more creative and constructive approach to teacher evaluation. This could be done by employing “clinical supervision.” Clinical supervision is an approach that began in the medical and health fields and is now being widely used in counseling and business sectors to allow for a more genuine and supportive evaluation of personnel.

Unlike the “snoopervision” approach taken in a one-time performance review, clinical supervision requires extensive conferencing between a supervisor (observer) and the personnel being evaluated. Conferencing implies that the observation and evaluation is done over a period of time, with opportunities for both the parties to talk about and listen to each other’s perceptions about the evaluation process and its eventual outcomes.

Steps involved

Stage 1: Pre-conference – informal interview of the teacher; exploration of his/her educational philosophy, classroom management styles, use of teaching methods, use of assessment, etc.; identification of strengths, weaknesses; discussion about a particular lesson that would be observed by the supervisor; discussion about different ways to teach the lesson; supervisor and teacher collaboratively work on a lesson plan.

Stage 2: Observation – once the date and time are set, the supervisor observes the lesson (prepared in stage 1) with minimal or no interruption. Instead of using a rubric to evaluate the teacher, the supervisor takes an anecdotal record of all that goes on in the class during the period of observation – lending to the collection of a qualitative/narrative data, which is more authentic.

Stage 3: Post-conference – after the observation, the teacher and supervisor sit down to talk about the lesson and how it was delivered. The supervisor leads the teacher through a series of self-reflection questions about the teaching experience and presents his feedback in the direction of improving instruction in the classroom.

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It’s amazing to see the kind of impact the word “test” has on people. The word has mystical powers that even scientist cannot completely understand and explain – the kind that could take people for a ride of their lives – the feelings that accompany it is many and invariably negative. Along with emotional chaos like fear, insecurity, acute feeling of uncertainty and hopelessness, it brings with it a host of other physical symptoms such as heart palpitations, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach aches, or headaches.

Surprise!

As a student, I witnessed many classmates experiencing despair during exams. Some so severe that they suffered from diarrhea, panic attacks, insomnia, loss of appetite, and other related conditions. The worst case scenario was when a student fainted and lost consciousness for a couple of minutes. This person needed immediate medical attention and was not allowed to sit for exams for the next couple of months.

What surprises me is that most students who experience severe forms of test anxiety are the ones who prepare way ahead of their tests and show average to above average performance in academic subjects. They are not under-performers as many would assume. Many who suffer from test anxiety eventually score low on tests because of the accompanying anxiety, and not necessarily because they don’t have the required intelligence or subject-specific aptitude.

Test anxiety affects everyone equally without differentiating students’ age, color, socio-economic status, or ability level. Often, students simply yield to its deadly grip by developing negative self-image about themselves as learners. They label themselves as “not smart” or “not good enough.” Repeated negative internal dialogues such as these soon dictate how individuals define themselves. This is a cycle that needs to be broken!

Wonder why?

More puzzling than the mystical, damaging powers of test anxiety is the needless persistence of our society to be exam-centric and perpetuate a tradition that has brought more harm than good (how many young students have ended their lives merely because they couldn’t meet their parents’ expectation for As?). It’s baffling to know that despite having numerous empirical evidences about the ill-effects of test-anxiety, schools still use tests to measure students’ learning.

A lot of research-based literatures have been published on dealing with test-anxiety. Unfortunately, they only serve as a partial solution to a full-grown, all-destructive problem related to students’ learning experiences. The fact remains despite learning and using different coping strategies, test-anxiety exists and its presence is deeply felt by students.

Sadly, it is only in the school system that a crisis, when detected, studied, and systematically understood, is not completely uprooted. Educators would rather come up with ways to reduce the impact of the problem. They tend to pacify the issue hoping that it will soon become assimilated into an already fractured system, without hurting anyone’s existence. Why should we entertain and utilize a system that hurts more than mends or cures?

There is another way!

The alternative to anxiety provoking tests is an educational approach called Mastery Learning. Mastery Learning is founded on the proposition that 90% of students can learn what is normally taught in schools at an “A” level if they are given enough time and appropriate instruction. Enough time here means the time that is required to demonstrate mastery of a set of instructional objectives set by teachers, whereas appropriate instruction means the following:

1. Break course into units of instruction
2. Identify objectives of units
3. Require students to demonstrate mastery of objectives for unit before moving on to other units

Example

A lesson on “writing formal letters” – the teacher could allow students to submit several drafts of the letter – progressively scaffolding mastery of formal letter writing by correcting every draft submitted and returning it with comments and feedback so that students could continue improving on it, until they could produce an almost perfect formal letter. By using Mastery Learning, the teacher has deliberately prevented students from failing or doing poorly on the lesson.

Anxiety-free test

When students are deliberately and systematically supported by teachers, they can and do learn much more effectively. Testing, using the mastery learning approach is exciting because it is determined by:

1. Actual number of objectives mastered over time as opposed to random number of disconnected facts memorized and regurgitated in a test
2. Number of units completed by an individual student as opposed to the number of units everyone was expected to complete whether they understood them or not
3. Proficiency level reached on each unit as opposed to scores (that are highly dependent upon the construction of valid and reliable tests – which is a weakness of many teachers) obtained on a set of units deemed important to the teacher, hence highly teacher-directed rather than student-centered

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“It’s not as big as I thought it was.” This is what passes my mind every time I visit the place I grew up as a child. As I loiter in the playground, soccer field and drive around the neighborhood, I realize that there is a huge difference in the perception held between then and now. What I used to dread, be uncertain about and had little or no information for unravel themselves as an open book, eliminating fears, uncertainties, and ignorance – allowing me the feeling of complete control over the experiences of owning the place I had once inhabited. I feel the same about the national examination I took when I was seventeen, my first break-up, and loss of a loved one. All these were “not as big as I thought they were.” However, it took me some time before I understood the true nature and enormity of the issue.

A matter of time

If there is one thing that I am completely convinced about and passionately advocate as a teacher is that “things, circumstances and people do change – all I need to do is to allow some time for the change to take place, naturally.” Time and opportunity are the two most important ingredients to bringing out the best in others. When faced with a difficult student, it is easier for a teacher to give up on him and focus on other better performing and well behaved students. But an educator is called to go beyond his or her call of duty and look into and meet the needs of even an under performing, disruptive student.

For most students, especially the ones classified as liabilities to the school system, it’s just a matter of time till they turn around and make amendments. No one wants to continue being a failure. No one cherishes the idea of being an object of others’ mockery and disapproval. But the change is not automatic.

Countless research findings in the area of resiliency point to the fact that it takes only one person to believe in a “problematic” student to bring about positive changes – behavioral and academic. And research indicate that this person is often a teacher – someone who is willing to give the student time and opportunity to make cognitive, emotional, and behavioral commitment to explore and tap into the reservoir of his or her innate abilities and potential and use them for a better function at school and elsewhere.

Beware of him

When I started out as a lecturer in an international college, a few of my colleagues warned me about a particular student whose behavior and academic performance did not impress them. “Watch out for so and so; he doesn’t submit assignments on time, comes late to class, is often absent, and doesn’t do well in exams,” were some of the things I heard from them. Before they could go on, I told them to stop filling my mind with such information because I didn’t want to view students with pre-conceived ideas, especially negative ones.

Sure enough, I soon learned that this student was all that my colleagues said he would be. So one day, I called him to the office, looked at him and said, “You have great potential in you; the few times you answered some of the questions posed in the class were mind-boggling, and I see greatness in you. Do you see that in yourself?” He gently nodded and whispered, “Yes.” I continued, “It is only you who could put your acts together, realize what you really want in life, and move in the direction of your dreams.” The student instantly opened up and started sharing about his dreams.

What I heard from him thereafter was amazing. His parents are educators, who own a private Thai school in Bangkok. He went on saying that he wants to finish college, continue with his graduate studies in education, and help them at the school. No one knew about this. It was hidden from others who only saw him as a troubled student. But because I believed in him and communicated this hope in his potential and possibility of a changed him, he was willing to open up, re-prioritize his goals, and pursue his ambition.

The result

The months and years ahead were not smooth for him, but the positive changes were clearly evident. I focused on giving him more time and opportunity to prove to himself and others that he was serious about his dreams. He did just that. He graduated in May 2007 and started working as a learning support teacher in an international school in Bangkok. One day, as I was checking e-mail, I saw a mail from him that read: “Dear Dr. Roy, check this website out; it’s an article about homework and learning that might interest you. I am helping a boy with ADHD and he is gaining a significant improvement in his studies” I smiled and felt proud of the kind of person he had become just because he found one person who believed in his potential, and gave him the time and opportunity he needed to bloom into the better him.

As teachers, we fail when we give up without trying and in the process of trying to build a student, let us not forget that best gifts we can give our students are time and opportunity.

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“A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.”

-Thomas Carruthers-

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Power of expectation

In management, the two most important secrets to success and productivity are: (1) the Pygmalion effect, and (2) the Galatea effect. The former focuses on performance expectation while the latter stresses the importance of on-going well-supported performance improvement. This article focuses on the Pygmalion effect – the power of expectation.

By definition, expectations are “a set of informed and/or uninformed predictions” that we hold of our own and others” behavior, thoughts, and feelings. Expectations are useful in regulating our day-to-day experiences, in dealing with people, and in understanding our subjective social world.

However, expectations could also lead to negative outcomes if relied on heavily without constant and deliberate awareness and monitoring of the same. Often, our predictions (expectations) bring to us what want to see in others and not necessarily what they truly intend to manifest. Regardless of how they are used, expectations play a great role in managing our own and others’ interpersonal interactions and these in turn determine our everyday performances.

Experiment with rats

In 1963, social psychologist Robert Rosenthal and his colleagues set up experiments collect empirical data on the power of expectation. Their research was called the study of “expectancy effect” or “self-fulfilling prophecy”. They randomly assigned rats into two groups, termed maze-bright and maze-dull. These rats were then given to two randomly selected college undergraduate students who took care of one group of rats each. The students only knew the rats as being either bright or dull. They were not aware of the fact that the rats were all the same.

When these students brought their respective rats back and tested them on the maze trials (ten trials over five consecutive days), the results indicated that the bright rats nearly doubled the dull rats in maze performances.

While there were no real differences in the intelligence of the two groups of rats, the bright rats did better because the college students who were responsible for them communicated high expectations through tactile and kinesthetic cues and these impacted the rats’ performances. The opposite is true about the dull rats. They underperformed because the students who were responsible for them communicated despondency and did not trust that the rats could produce anything of worth. They did so through their non-verbal cues.

Experiment replicated

Shocked by his findings, Robert Rosenthal designed another experiment to test the working of the expectancy effect with children and their teachers. If positive high expectation improved the performance of rats, could the same effect be seen, even more forcefully among students in learning? With this question in mind, Rosenthal assigned student-subjects to teachers (experimenters), a few of which were supposedly “early bloomers”. By this he meant that the few early bloomers have the potential of excelling exceedingly greater than their classmates. But the truth is – all the student-subjects were of the same IQ level before the experiment began (in fact they were chosen to be part of the study because they possessed similar IQs).

After a few weeks, a post IQ test was administered to all the student-subjects; It was found that the supposedly early bloomers scored two standard deviations higher than the rest of the class on an intelligence test. This indicates a 50% increase in IQ score among the students for whom teachers had held high positive expectations.

High/low expectation class

What does a class with high or low expectation look like? Expectations are communicated verbally and non-verbally. The following table indicates the type of things that could be expected when a class of students experience either one or both.

	Positive high expectation	Negative low expectation
Verbal cues (what teachers say and believe in)	·“I am excited about teaching grade three; I know they are going to be marvelous” ·“I know you can do it; here, let me help you…”	·“you always upset me Lucy” · “I knew you’d fail – you always do!” · “Oh no… not grade three, they are so dull. I don’t want to teach them!”
Non-verbal cues (what teachers do and communicate through tactile and kinesthetic means – more subtle)	·Paying attention to all students ·Asking questions to all students ·Involving students in decision making ·Helping and supporting through challenges in learning and other aspects of schooling ·Negotiating rather than imposing ·Smiling and maintaining eye-contacts ·Being approachable	·Paying attention only to the bright students and deliberately neglecting the weaker ones ·Asking questions challenging questions to bright students and very easy ones to weaker students ·Let students struggle and fail in difficult task ·Separate bright students from weaker ones through seating arrangements, class grouping, etc. ·Use frowns, disgust, anger as a weapon to hit students down

What do you want?

Teachers get what they want from their students. If they expect high performance, responsible citizenship, critical and creative thinking, generation of new knowledge and solutions – they would communicate these in a variety of ways to students. These will serve as positive stimulation for students to become motivated about being their best and performing well. When students sense and become convinced that their teachers have given up on them and expect them to be good for nothing, they will deliver the exact same thing – at least they are not disappointing the teachers and their predictions. The choice is ours to make. Let us choose to believe in and value students. Let us intentionally decide to stop ridiculing and de-valuing them.

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When I first started teaching at college, students were overloaded with lecture notes and handouts. The contents for a semester-long course took the space of the whole D-ring file, which is at least five inches thick. Students had to submit at least eight reading reports, along with fulfilling other short and long-term projects, daily quizzes, unit tests, mid-semester and final examinations. Looking back, I wonder how students endured such a hardship. I am pretty sure that they perceived me as an insensitive professor whose goal was to show off his knowledge. How much of what I taught made sense remains a mystery.

How much is enough?

Completing a textbook that contains hundreds of concepts, some entirely new and some re-visited for the second or third time within a specified time frame is a challenging task. Teachers, in their attempts to complete syllabus rush through the standards-based contents touching only the surface, and sometimes not even that. Students, in their attempts to score well in tests memorize as much as possible to regurgitate when the time comes. To make things worse, textbooks come with additional resources, worksheets, and guide notes that supposedly enhance understanding of the subject. But when taken together, they eat up learners’ cognitive capacities.

Once I was approached by an English teacher who asked for assistance in teaching vocabulary to second language learners. When inquired how many new words she teaches her kids during a lesson, she gave a figure that shocked me. On average, she teaches twenty to thirty new words per lesson. She tells and students follow, memorize, and reproduce by applying these new words in sentences.

This English teacher didn’t just steal kids of their learning opportunities but also encountered a lot of classroom management related difficulties. Practically speaking vocabulary isn’t something teachers need to teach in isolation to other subjects or life experiences. Secondly, vocabulary can be learned effectively only when new words are perceived as useful and actually applied in the right context.

Before parting ways, I recommended that the teacher teaches only two or three new words per lesson. I also encouraged her to do a variety of things to learn the few new words – act them out, write and sing a song out of them, draw pictures to represent them, connect them to students’ native tongue and allow them to express the same, etc.

Just-in-case learning

There is a reason why the traditional school system advocated quantity over quality. In the factory model of schooling, people were given as much knowledge as possible so that when a need arises they would qualify with entry-level education to undertake a particular job. As long as one had the pre-requisites necessary for a job, he or she was okay. Curriculum developers arbitrarily decided upon which subjects and corresponding contents were important. The decision was almost solely based on the job market and what was needed in industries.

This system required that children learned everything so that by the time they go to college or university, they could specialize in one or two subjects. Even at tertiary level students are required to learn everything just-in-case some of the things learned could be used at work. The greatest weakness of the just-in-case learning approach is its detachment from practice. People learn theory so that they could apply it when needed. Individuals never knew for sure if they would ever apply a particular knowledge. In other words, they took chances – making education a socially acceptable gambling?

Just-in-time learning

On the contrary, new forms of schooling do not give importance to quantity. Rather, they focus on ensuring that whatever little is learned, it is learned well through qualitative extension and application of knowledge.

Since knowledge is freely available, easily accessed, and thoughtfully created and re-created, anyone and everyone can learn about something new provided that he or she has the right tools, which are not difficult to find or own. An individual who does not know anything or much about, let’s say “cloning” could do a full-fledged presentation on it if allowed time and appropriate information technological tools and facilities.

All of a sudden, teachers and students do not have to rely on curriculum developers to specify what knowledge is important to learn. They can collaboratively decide upon what contents could and should be learned together. They can also set their own pace for how much knowledge is to be absorbed and utilized. They can be selective of many teaching and learning variables that affect education significantly.

Children become inspired to learn when schools provide just-in-time learning experiences, where children learn only when they want to learn – a purposeful and meaningful learning indeed.

Quantity overloads, exhausts, and diffuses meaning in learning. Quality on the other hand relaxes, increases understanding, and innovates.

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Teachers face many challenges in the classroom on a daily basis, from classroom management to lesson delivery and assessment. Getting students on the same page can be a difficult task indeed, but it is not an impossible one. Cultivating a positive learning environment of mutual respect and trust goes a long way toward getting desired results from your students.

Creating this environment in your classroom is not unattainable, but with all of the daily challenges teachers face, it sometimes becomes difficult to realize that making a few changes can make a world of difference for you and your students. Read on for a few tips on creating the ideal classroom environment for you and your students.

Common Courtesy

Whether you think this is important or not, keep in mind that many students’ parents haven’t devoted much time and effort to help their children develop habits of common courtesy. Saying “please” and “thank you” goes a long way when you want something done. If you are wrong, admit that you are wrong. this helps students to mirror your behavior. This is not to say that you should apologize unnecessarily, but students follow in their teacher’s lead and will be more open to share with you if you are more open with them.

Active Listening

When you ask students questions, listen to their answers. This applies to questions that have a right or wrong answer, as well as the deeper questions you may ask in a classroom discussion. Students are always dropping hints and clues about their lives that teachers often miss. If you want honest feedback about a lesson or classroom activities, ask for anonymous commentary. Naturally, there must be some rules to keep the comments short and relevant, but if you are getting a lot of the same types of comments, listen to what the students are saying and make changes where appropriate.

Open Door Policy

Let students know that you are there for them, both in class and outside of class time. This doesn’t mean that they are your “friends” per se, but allowing them to communicate with you when they feel most comfortable can be an amazing tool in getting more out of your students. If they know that you are there for them, they are more likely to do what you ask of them. Keep the lines of communication open (including email), and see how things change for the better.

Be Flexible

Don’t be a pushover, but be realistic. High school students especially have a very full day, followed by activities after school. Keep in mind that when in college students may have only half the class load that they do in high school. Maximize classroom time and keep homework to a minimum within reason. Don’t overload students if you want to see them succeed. Too much work can result in burnout and reluctance that can affect your entire class. When possible, be willing to work with students regarding homework and give time for projects that will give you higher quality work, rather than a large quantity of activities that simply keep students busy.

This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of How to become a teacher in Texas. She invites your feedback at [email protected]

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Quick fixes have been a primary approach to problem-solving at schools. Quick fixes take care of an issue for a time, but after a while the same problem emerges, only to attack the system more fiercely. Quick fixes stem from individuals who are reactive. A reaction, as compared to a response, involves little reason and more emotion. Hence, teachers and school leaders who are driven by reactive behaviors toward problems face greater chances of destroying whatever working relationship there is among the individuals in the system. When reason is suspended and emotion reigns supreme, the outcome of decisions is invariably regrettable.

Nature of quick fixes

Quick fixes are symptomatic in nature. They operate by the medical model. When one gets sick, he goes to the doctor to be treated. In the hospital, the doctor asks the patient for felt symptoms. The doctor also checks if there are physical manifestation of the same. He then puts the symptoms together, decides on the ailment, and prescribes a cure. This is the same approach used by traditional psychology, a field called behaviorism. Under the influence of behaviorism, human behavior was viewed to be symptoms of internal conditions of mind.

Missing element

Have you wondered why doctors always tell you to re-visit them for a follow-up? Since they decide on the condition of your body based on the symptoms that you manifested, they can only establish the correctness of their intelligent guess about a particular diagnosis if the treatment prescribed worked. No one knows the actual cause and/or cure for any one medical condition, unless a more comprehensive test-diagnosis is conducted. In other words, treatment does not guarantee alleviation of an ailment. The root cause(s) of the problem go(es) unexplored; hence creative solutions are not tapped into as they should be.

Systems approach

Systems approach encourages individuals to respond (not react) to problems that arise at school. When one responds to a problem, he/she takes a few steps back, looks at the whole situation objectively, considers all the possible factors that may be responsible for the issue, prioritizes and selectively tackles interrelated issues to amend the situation. Responding to a problem requires a broad view of the various events, people, experiences, and operations in the school and putting them in the right contexts.

An example
Let’s say a child is found to be chronically skipping school. Once his case is identified and classified as problematic, the formal disciplinary process begins. The process requires that the child is held accountable for violating school regulations. The disciplinary committee of the school would eventually administer some sort of punishment to discourage the problem behavior. But does this solve the actual problem?

The opposite is true of the systems approach. The same child would be treated differently and the problem behavior becomes an opportunity for the school to explore and identify ways to help the child become a better person. This is possible because the individuals handling the case do not prematurely jump into fixing the problem. Rather, they are genuinely interested in understanding the child and altering his experiences in a positive way.

Systems approach in action

1. First and foremost, ask the following questions: “What are some of the factors that may be responsible for a particular behavioral pattern in a child? What is the actual cause of the problem? who, why, when, how, etc.”

2. Exhaust all possible answers to these questions by including as many individuals as possible (collaboration) – people who identify with and understand the nature of the problem and who are passionate about uprooting the actual cause(s) of the problem.

3. Often, the best solutions to problems come from the individuals who are experiencing them. So, in the case of skipping school, the child may be the right person to recommend a solution.

4. Take time; in other words, do not attempt to quick fix. Quick fixes yield short-lived results. When a solution is well-thought of and come from extended reflection, it tends to truly repair the existing problem.

5. Put the problem in the context of the personal, physical, social, and economic realities of the one experiencing and affected by the problem.

6. Resolution of a problem involves the commitment and collaborative action of the whole system. For example, when a child faces a problem in reading, it is not just the responsibility of the English language teacher to help and support the child. Teachers of other subjects need to be involved in the process too. Otherwise, others will undo what one has done. This will spiral into series of frustrating experiences and eventually discourage the child until he goes back to square one.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]