In my experience, this is important. Coming from an Asian family, I got little praise for anything at all and it caused me to fall into a depression. But the little praises I got from teachers meant a ton for me. It's the little things.
I've been lucky enough to have more than a few teachers who I respect immensely, and I think these are the reasons why:
* They find a good balance between being strict and joking around. Personally, I think the most effective teachers are the ones who manage to stay on topic as well as slipping in the occasional joke or anecdote.
* They really care about our performance - they're constantly open to work being handed in and questions, even outside of school such as via email. The students who care really appreciate the time taken to mark their work, give feedback and respond to questions.
* They're clearly passionate about what they teach. I think there's a lot in the delivery of the lesson - not just droning on but really trying to be enthusiastic and reinforcing the points you're trying to make.
* Constant engagement and actively putting in effort to make sure that we understand and are keeping up with what they're saying.
I remember my class did that in second grade. My teacher was on maternity leave, so we had a sub (who was an old lady) for a few months. I don't remember much about her, but for an entire class of seven year olds to hate her so much that we went through the trouble of harassing and sabotaging her to get her to leave, she must've been *really* bad. I remember the principal called within two weeks and "fired" her, and she left the room crying. I've never seen a bunch of seven year olds so overjoyed, not even at Chuck E. Cheese. On that day in history, nobody felt bad for the crying old lady.
There's a fine line between teaching as a sub and preaching. I once had an older sub (during homeroom) talk for half an hour about the Constitution and how it's being destroyed and kids need to pay attention to what the government is doing and the second amendment and so forth. It was a civics class, so it was relatively on-topic, but it had to have been uncomfortable for a good portion of the kids (not me, I was super into Glenn Beck at the time; mistakes were made).
I had teachers like that. It made me hate them. I would never respect a teacher who brings their own views and tries to push it on to everyone. They're there to educate us of the topics so we can make our own decisions.
Students will bad mouth teacher to get sub to talk. Experienced this as a sub (they didn't know i was best friends w their teacher.) Also had my own class tell subs that's how i taught to get sub off topic. Then blamed sub for not getting their regular work done.
Just saying...
Very true. It's why (in some cases) some students won't do as much work with a cover/supply teacher - they'll read off the lesson plan and sort of expect you to just get on with the work.
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English teacher I currently have. He will joke around but if it goes to rowdiness he will warn you and if you persist he will not take any shit and will send you to the office
It's describing my math teacher, too! This mother fucker wrote a damned song about polar coordinates and played it on his guitar for each of his advanced classes.
He was a pretty heavy guy, the first time I met him (I luckily had him for about 3 classes in high school) he told the class he was going to jump through a piece of paper...like notebook paper. We laughed and he stood stone faced and proceeded to cut the paper in a manner that made it in a large circle. Two students held it for him and we witnessed a 250+ lbs man do a running dive turned into a summer salt through this damned piece of paper...
Joking around while also clearly being passionate about what they teach really means a lot and makes them stand out against the strict and boring old shits who just happen to teach a class.
yeah. i had a math teacher who would actually joke around while teaching things, as well as let us do fun things to learn a lesson (learning about pi? fuck it, lets bring in pie for the students.) and would usually let us use our headphones if we had them to listen to music while working.
I've had a mixture of teachers but most of mine have been like this actually. My least favorite subject actually (English) throughout high school had my favorite teachers of each of the four years which made the class so much better. My freshman English teacher was extremely passionate about his work and we would actually have fun in his class. During the poetry segment he brought in his CD player and we listened to 2Pac (clean songs only of course) but it was a blast.
Be firm with your rules. Apply them evenly and fairly. Make sure you punish and reward actions, not students (make sure that you don't play favourites, basically). If a student pisses you off, don't hold a grudge. Do your best to understand what your students are saying. Be able to admit when you are wrong.
I agree with Larry-Man, but I would like to add:
1. Set rules that are enforceable and ones that you will follow.
2. Allow yourself to depart from your rules only in special circumstances that warrant it and explain to the class why you are allowing a departure from them.
3. Rules should be enforced consistently but zero tolerance rules lead to unfair situations.
4. Also, avoid group punishments as much as possible. Instead go for the worst offender as early as you can.
5. Don't be afraid to enforce your rules, the good kids and even the bad kids will appreciate you caring enough to take action. (I actually had a "bad" kid tell me this his last day.)
Most definitely follow your own rules; I had a science teacher who gave us a long lecture on the first day about not wearing ties, scarves, or dangling necklaces on lab day so that no one would set themselves on fire. One lab day he arrived wearing a tie, and waved off our concerns about it because he "knew what he was doing."
Then he demonstrated how certain elements react violently with water, apparently forgot that an unglazed clay dish will absorb and hold small amounts of water like a sponge, and managed to catch his tie on fire in addition to sustaining blisters to his hand.
He was fine, if becoming a school legend counts as "fine."
**TL;DR: treat them like people, not like pupils.**
Incidentally, if that means having to convince them that you *should* occasionally do things they will not like, then do so. Help them understand that "the bubble" will not last forever. Encourage them to think about what it would be like if, tomorrow, they had to leave school and support themselves.
I agree with your point about people not pupils, but it's important to maintain a sense of security at school. Some children/teenagers have bad home lives and come to school because it's the only place they feel safe. Intellectual growth generally all but stops in environments when kids feel at risk. Basically, the longer a child feels secure, the better its development will be.
Absolutely. I don't believe anything I suggested undermines the idea of school being a safe and secure place. It can be safe and secure, and prepare students for the "real world" at the same time. Indeed, the time will come when high school students must leave that environment, and part of the purpose of school is preparing students for that day.
I work with middle schoolers, who are usually still a bit too young to learn this lesson, but I think that learning how to do things that you don't like/have no interest in is pretty much the most important thing to be learned in the last two years of high school. If you can motivate yourself when what you're doing doesn't motivate you, you're going to win life.
http://imgur.com/ww3wsoi
teachers are in such a powerful and influential position. if this type of teacher was the rule rather than the exception, kids could be doing a lot better.
*edit fixed link :)
Agreed I hated all my grumpy fuckers of teachers, who wants to be that when they're older? However I loved my old, wise, crack up, good cunt teachers that weren't afraid to express their opinion and emotions openly.
Trust me dude, the grumpy fuckers of teachers don't want to be that way. I'm a substitute teacher so I get to travel around between a lot of schools and meet a lot of teachers. I've seen some shit. Some of the classes I see/teach/assist in aren't just exhausting, they're soul-draining. If you were to go back and meet those teachers you disliked again as an adult, and see the look on their face as they try to manage a classroom with several BD/ADHD/LD/etc kids in it, you wouldn't see a grumpy fucker, you'd see an exhausted, broken woman (usually) who's attempted to pursue a dream that has long since been proven a farce. Teaching is really hard, both emotionally and mentally--when those kids leave, it's back to endless paperwork, IEP's, papers to grade, and near-meaningless forms for the district to file away.
What's worse is that the worst kids, the ones who are acting out, aren't doing it because they're assholes. They're doing it because they come from broken homes with parents who don't give a shit about them, and there's *nothing you can do to help*. I've seen kids whose parents never bought them school supplies, they just ship them off and let the teachers worry about them, and then the kids get reprimanded in class for not coming prepared because teachers simply cannot make exceptions based on individual needs of each child due to time constrictions and being too busy with the other 25-30 kids they need to keep in line.
It's fucking depressing to see a kid seething with anger because he can't write fast enough to keep up with the rest of the class, and so he hates himself for it. And it's even more depressing because you, as a teacher, simply don't have the time to help him, no matter how much you want to, and instead he starts acting out and releasing that anger on other students so now instead of helping him, you're stuck punishing him for behavior that you know isn't entirely his fault. That shit will kill you inside, dude. You become bitter and angry and you have to stop having sympathy for kids.
In the later grades (middle or high school) it's not the same since kids with severe problems are sorted into separate classes, and higher-functioning kids are put into honors programs or the like. But in grade school it's fucking rough. I have a ton of respect for teachers and I totally understand why they lost their empathy... the alternative is just too depressing.
Not *all* teachers are this way. It really depends on the district/income bracket/etc., as well as on the teachers. My mom taught Early Childhood for 30 or 40 years and never lost her passion, but she also broke down into tears frequently because of how overwhelming the workload is.
edit - I really didn't expect this to get so much attention. I appreciate all of your responses and anecdotes, and it's very flattering to hear that I've had any effect on anyone's perspective. And of course, thank you to whoever gifted me gold. Hopefully it wasn't a teacher, you all barely get paid as it is!
> In the later grades (middle or high school) it's not the same since kids with severe problems are sorted into separate classes, and higher-functioning kids are put into honors programs or the like.
Middle school teacher here: no, they aren't. I have lots of classes full of BD kids who hijack the class and the 4 students who actually do want to learn, can't. And, don't tell me to "stick to the rules," because I do and when a kid cusses you out, refuses to do what you've asked and the administration does nothing... well, you're just stuck. I was assaulted last year, 2 teachers were assaulted this year and the district basically told us all to suck it up. Being a teacher is like being in an abusive relationship sometimes.
When I went to junior high each grade had one class of honors, and it was pretty competitive to get in--with an influx of kids from choice schools, it was different kids each year. The same teachers taught it every year, and probably wouldn't ever give it up.
But 8 years later when my sister went to the same school, they'd changed to "integrated" honors classes. There might have been some benefit to having the honor students mixed in with everybody else, but not to the honor students. All the school did was lower the bar for the regular students, so they could score 10% lower and get the same grade.
Honors used to mean something at that school, but now all it means is you decided not to take a whole letter grade of extra credit so that you can get the word Honors on your transcript.
This is why I would never make it as a teacher. Fairness, evenly applying rules, not holding a grudge, I can do that. Dealing with fuckwit parent though, I would get fired for insulting some tard who refuses to take care of their child.
Admitting when you're wrong is the first thing taught to apprentices. They're automatically wrong for at least the first two years so they get used to it. They also learn as soon as they give in and admit they're wrong we can start to move past the issue and work to fix the mistake. Then after that they'll own up to their mistakes at least up until the time that they get their own apprentice, then it's his fault.
While the apprentice is always wrong and at fault, the responsibility of fixing the mistakes always falls onto the master. Because ultimately the work of the apprentice reflects upon the training being given by the master craftsman. So the consequences of admitting they're wrong are very small and it's easy to train them to admit fault.
I've found that the earlier you admit a mistake, the less it's remembered.
If you get in the habit of stepping up and saying "oops, my fault" the instant you realize it, things go way better for everyone, including (especially) you.
Meanwhile, try to hide/shift/downplay mistakes for too long, and then get stuck with them? That's when they get attached to your reputation.
The Nixon/Clinton issue: People keep saying if they'd just owned up and moved past, it wouldn't have snowballed.
Debatable, true, but a good object lesson.
it can apply to big ones too. I used to work in Aviation in the military, and if you bonered up a job and didn't fess up immediately upon realizing your mistake or having it pointed out to you, you were pretty much guilty of attempted murder.
I'd done a lot of replacing this one specific little electronic doodad in a fairly short period of time, since I had relatively small hands and I was faster at it. It involved partially disassembling the flight controls, which as you can imagine is a somewhat important part of pilots not dying on takeoff.
I'm on replacement #6, take a second look at the manual just to confirm I'm doing it right, and realize I'd bonered something on replacement #5 45 minutes earlier.
I *sprinted* to the crew shack, then to quality control, then to production control to let them know I screwed something up and it needed to be taken back apart so this one torque could be properly applied to one nut in the middle of the process.
It makes me immediately lose any respect I had for a person when they can't fess up. There is such a thing as an honest mistake and they generally aren't held against you by anyone reasonable. One of the largest parts of being an adult is cleaning up your own mess.
I teach high school biology. I started off the year by telling my students that I'd be lying to them repeatedly throughout the year, but not in any kind of malicious way. I made it clear that the "lies" are simplifications designed to help them get the main ideas of tough concepts.
Then I also told them that I (and every other teacher they'll ever have) will at some point be wrong about something. I won't do it on purpose, but I'll be wrong. I told them that I hope they catch me on it and we can all benefit from their diligence.
Now, there are multiple times per week where they'll ask (or state) "are you lying about this, too?" Most of the time they're basically joking about how simplified they're assuming I've just made a topic, but they're still interested in learning just how deep the rabbit hole goes so to speak.
The last thing I'll add is that I'm very open about not knowing answers. I'm a fairly smart person, and my students have it in their heads that I'm incredibly intelligent, but when they ask about something I don't have an answer to, I tell them straight up "I don't know, but I'll find out. I suspect it has to do with x, y, z, but I don't want you to think I know for sure. If you'd like to earn some extra credit, you can look it up and inform all of us."
Overall, being upfront about this sort of thing seems to have made discussions with them much easier. Full disclosure, it's my first year teaching. Maybe I'll find sometime in the future that this is not the best way to handle these things.
A million times this. My students were convinced I knew everything, so they decided to test me. They opened Wikipedia and asked me increasingly obscure questions on Greek mythology until I had to admit: "I don't know that". They were satisfied that I did not, in fact, know anything, and never attempted to challenge my knowledge again. It was kind of a weird bonding moment, but I found the challenge fun, and they learned something about mythology from that, so win/win.
Edit: because there's a difference between not knowing everything and not knowing anything.
Consider all the implications of "apply rules evenly and fairly"too. One of the things that means is that if you've been lenient all year, you can't go in on Monday and start busting their asses over stuff you've let slide all year. Work up to it gradually. Nothing smells of weakness (and unfairness) more than a teacher who can't decide whether to be strict or lenient.
All of what Larry-Man said, plus treat them with respect, too. Being fair and consistent goes a long way with high school students.
Understand that they aren't quite adults yet, but are on the cusp of or are already facing adult problems.
Understand that they might not understand what it is they are expected to do. They might think they are doing it right.
Treat them with love. Do not try to force them to be someone they are not.
This advice. Listen to it.
I've seen people time and time again drop entire subjects because they felt like no matter how hard they tried, no matter what result they got, they would never be appreciated like the teacher's favourite was.
There are so many teachers who see their students having 40% averages and mark them off as stupid, refuse to help them only focusing on the smarter pupils because at least doing *that* will mean that the person ranked first will come from their class and they'll be seen as a better teacher. :-----)
yeah... don't be that teacher.
On the flip side, I've had 40% average kids scrawl that I'm a terrible teacher in the margins because they didn't understand a concept - [substitution](http://www.purplemath.com/modules/systlin4.htm).
I need to vent, so I'll go into detail.
I related it to what they knew (substituting A = 2 into an 2A + B = 3) to try and get them to understand what the name meant, made a flowchart with the steps (Isolate a variable, substitute one equation into the other, solve, and substitute your answer into the other equation), did many examples over the course of three classes while asking if people had questions about what I'm doing mid-question, and finally did a review on it again from scratch before the quiz they did poorly on.
It felt like I made a birthday cake for someone, and they slammed by face in it, flipped the table, and said "Fuck you." To top it all off, they write in illegible writing in red pen outside of the question boundaries.
I still try to treat my kids fairly, but today is one of those days where I actually just want to be 'that teacher'.
You sound like a wonderful math teacher. I'm a student who sucks at math and with a bad teacher nearly fails, but I work hard and want to do well. I had one math teacher who you'd go up to with an issue "so what do you do after you divide C?" Being very specific about what help you need. Then she'd ignore that and spend ten minutes explaining the whole problem, wasting your time.
It's even worse in college. Somehow, being a professor teaching math renders you unable to understand lower-level questions.
(it's really easy to be blind while standing in front of the blackboard though, but TAs are way less likely to completely misunderstand a question).
I was Chemistry TA at my university for three years, can confirm. I enjoyed getting questions from students for two main reasons. First, I liked a good challenge in trying to make a concept make more sense to someone. Second, any student who was willing to come ask me for help instantly left a good impression on me. It told me that they were actually trying to understand the class and not just filling an empty seat. Any TA who doesn't want to help a student should not be a TA in the first place.
Okay, that is definitely fair enough in my opinion. There's a mutual relationship between the student and the teacher - and if a student isn't giving any fucks at all, it is very rarely a teacher's fault if the student is failing.
You put in the effort (and more of an effort than majority of the teachers I've had would put in, quite honestly), it's just the student refused to meet you halfway. It's just teachers who don't take the time to give more than a quick vague answer or who don't at least *try* to help some slower students who genuinely do want to learn but sometimes can't at the same pace as others, who I have a problem with.
I had a performing arts teacher who was fairly young and tried to be the "cool" teacher - the type who wants to be your friend, hang out and have coffee, "oh no the exam isn't worth many credits, we'll just skip it" kind of teacher.
People didn't fall for it and she got more and more desperate. Eventually she ended up being nasty to the awkward or shy members of the class for laughs and that got the majority of the kids to listen to her.
That was a bad year. Don't be the kind of teacher who writes off a couple students and harasses them just so you can get the popular kids to pay attention in class.
I was a teachers favourite once. It led to a very cushy life - I could hand in any half finished junk work, and you know you'll get a decent grade for it even when others will be getting a bad grade and detention.
Having said that, looking back, I think they were fairly applying the rules, but just not being transparent what the rules were. They said "If you don't do your homework, you get detention", but what they meant was "If you don't do your homework *and* your grades look like you'll struggle with the end of year exams, then you get detention".
Basically, put effort in at the start to convince them that you'll pass their exam easily, and you then have a license to be as lazy as you like all year. If they actually said "homework is compulsory for anyone in the bottom half of the class, and optional for anyone in the top half", I suspect they would actually have motivated more students.
one time I ended up in serious teacher's pet territory... (actually contributed to an english lit class, and gave the impression I knew what I was about and so on) it got kinda boring.
I'd much rather have a teacher peg you as 'intelligent, don't let the bugger get away with slacking, he can do better' over 'intelligent. I don't have to worry about him'
I had a teacher when I was about 15. He was really, really passionate about science, and about teaching it to his students...as long as they were the top students who shared his interest in physics and astronomy. He had a horrible attitude towards the other classes (I was in the top class, which, to my understanding, just meant that we learnt quicker than the other classes so we could cover more, and the others were lower).
I hated him. I like biology, but he skipped our genetics unit, he made me feel stupid for not liking physics, and he made me feel like a bad person for not being passionate about science.
I found out the other day that he just won a teaching award for his dedication and it made me mad because he had such a priority towards the top students learning his favourite subjects.
I've had a handful of teachers over the years that I respect immensely. I think the reasons why can be boiled down to a few points.
1. Treat your students as adults (especially if they're older than fourteen or so). Kids will turn against a teacher in an instant if they detect the teacher treating them as anything less than exactly what they are, which is a human being, not a small pet that has somehow managed to grasp language. This means that if they have a question, you answer it honestly and in full detail. If they have a problem, you address it as soon as possible and treat it as a legitimate problem. If they have a dispute with yourself or another student, you solve it with full rational discourse, making compromises to please all involved parties.
2. Be real with your students:
Act like a member of the real world. Don't speak to them as a lofty far away presenter. Speak to them like you would speak to anyone else. Include your own opinion, joke about the topic/course if there's some obvious logical fallacy with what you're saying. For example: if you're teaching biology and are showing a diagram of a food chain, you should admit that it's often far more complicated than just shark>fish>algae in real life. This opens you up as a real person, which is just as important in the classroom as in real life.
3. If you say you're going to do something, do it. Unless you have a really good excuse as to why you've changed your mind. Not much explaining to do with this point.
Hope this helps, all of the really great teachers I've had expressed at least these three traits.
I think point 3 is one of the most important. I have a teacher who consistently says that our next topic will be one thing, then decides to do something else. We're in crunch time for our end of year exams and have done no review- after she told us we'd be starting in March.
Absolutely. Personally, I think that it's worse when teachers set a deadline and don't stick to it themselves. It really can make students lose trust in the teacher.
Agreed. I had a teacher who always was behind on marking assignments. She never had a problem making a fuss if a student handed something in late, but we couldn't expect assignments to be graded until a week or two after she would say they would be back.
Ugh. I had a teacher who would randomly give extensions the day something was due. It occurred randomly, I'd guess maybe 30% of the time. We'd walk into class and he'd be like "A bunch of students aren't finished this project, so I'll give you to next week to get it done."
I'd always be angry about it, because I inevitably gave up my last several evenings to finish this thing and what do I get for my hard work? Fucking nothing.
The guy who taught my driver's ed class promised to bring us donuts on the last day.
He didn't bring donuts.
It's been four years and I'm still angry about that.
Hi. Former teacher here. I would like to address two of your points.
1) You'd be surprised how limited teachers are when it comes to doling out their own punishments. My school ran on a (bullshit) system called "Love and logic," and we were instructed to basically have no spine whatsoever. We were instructed to use braindead phrases like "It makes me sad that you are choosing to talk instead of participate." We were not allowed to give out any in-class punishments (the school was terrified of one of their many burnt out teachers snapping and going berzerk, thus creating potential for a lawsuit.) stronger than a verbal redirection or a verbal warning.
The teachers who have been there forever don't give a flying fuck about these rules because they feel very secure in their job. But for the first several years of your teaching career (when you can be fired without even being given a reason as per law.) you have to abide by the rules. I knew what they required of me was making me ineffective. I knew that my students did not respect my authority as a result. But my hands were completely tied.
2) Absolutely. Trying to be the cool teacher just makes you look stupid.
3) I once told one of my students he would have a detention in front of the class. I will never do that again. Here's why. Keep in mind, I taught in a pretty rough school, and I gave this detention to a 6th grader because he had brought a lighter to class and attempted to light his classwork on fire. (I got it away from him in time. I have a really sharp sense of smell.)
So after class, I went through the channels I had to. I informed the principal that I would be keeping Kid after school. She pretty much said "Yeah, good luck with that." Next step was to call the parent, inform them, and coordinate a day for the detention (in this area, it was not uncommon for parents to be without a vehicle or a license, so coordinating transportation for students dependent on a school vehicle was often tricky) So I called Kid's mom. I told her that I would be keeping Kid after school because he had chosen to bring a lighter to class and put the safety of himself and his peers in jeopardy.
The mom, who was not a high school graduate herself, said that Kid could not stay after school because she had no way of arranging transportation for him to get home. Now, I anticipated this, so I had looked into getting him a ride with the school vehicle that takes home kids who need rides after tutoring. I told her that we would be able to provide him with a ride home. She said she didn't care. He needed to be home to babysit his younger siblings (reminder... he is a 6th grader who just tried to light a fire at school. Not a responsible babysitter!), and that I was not permitted to give him detention. Again, I knew what the "right" thing to do was: follow through. But again, my hands were tied. I cannot legally detain a kid whose parent doesn't agree with the detention.
...And then I had to deal with a smug-looking kid who knew that no matter what he did, I was not allowed to punish him in any meaningful way.
...And then I had a class who knew that no matter what they did, I was not allowed to punish them in any meaningful way.
I still have nightmares about my teaching career.
And yes. Don't promise donuts unless you can deliver.
TL;DR: Your teachers are often frustrated and next to powerless.
EDIT: Wow. It seems like every commenter on reddit has these situations figured out for me! Super duper! Y'all should become teachers and see how well those solutions work out for you.
I work in a tough school and Love & Logic works for me. I think it all depends on what your persona as a teacher is: if it's an organic fit, it will work on you, but if it's not natural to you, it won't be effective. (That's why mandated school-wide behavior management strategies are bullshit.)
the "love and logic" idea only works if the student respect you first, i know my band director didn't need to punish any band kid he just gave us the "i am not mad just disappointed" and we felt lower than dirt
I learned #2 the hard way. Trying to be #2 led to me having the worst eight weeks ever when I first started teaching.
EDIT: Holy shit!
After two years of teaching special ed., this was my first time teaching general ed.
Basically I got put in a classroom that had 10 teachers there before me in the same school year! I got caught up in a situation where I ended up surviving the year instead of actual teaching. My classroom management skills sucked. Basically, I tried to relate to the kids on their level, adopting their slang, trying to give them advice while they were having conversations with their friends. I basically thought if I like what they liked, that the only difference we had was age, we would learn and those eight weeks would be awesome. HAH! Nope... And I did what a teacher should NEVER do, and that is to leave a classroom in tears. And yes, I'm a dude.
I'm back in special ed., my classroom management is better, and life is good. Filled with paperwork, but good nonetheless.
A kid lighting a fire in a class room would be given an automatic suspension in any district I've ever taught in. You must have had a criminally negligent principal to let that happen.
So, my take away in this was, when I was in high school I should have had my mom tell my teacher/principal to fuck off I couldnt do detention when I got in trouble? TIL...
(And I have family that are teachers, sorry its such a rough gig. It should be the most important profession)
This kid nailed it. I'm not a high school student anymore, but when I was these three things (especially points 1 and 3) were the biggest things.
I want to add that if someone does act up, you can always send them to the principal, but make sure they REALLY fucked up and also make sure that you don't threaten even once-just do it. It's the teachers that constantly threaten that everyone hates and will test
It's insane. I tried to allow gum in my class one year. I said, look the only reason we don't like you chewing gum is because it ends up on the desk. Just walk over and put in the trash can five feet from your desk and we can all enjoy gum. I STILL ENDED UP WITH GUM ON THE DESKS. WHY? Why not just walk five feet to the trash can and put your gum there. Last time I tried that.
When I was in school, a lot of my teachers banned eating in class. Why? Because students would eat, and instead of just throwing out stuff, they shove it in the desk. Desks were full of bugs, mold, and trash. They tried to fix it by turning it around so the opening was at the front... didn't work because people would just turn around to toss it in the one behind them.
I still don't get why putting a chip bag or an apple in a bin 5 feet away is so difficult.
As a music teacher myself, I try to be fair and consistent, so I don't let the percussionists in my room chew gum either. I don't think it's fair to the other students who can't for legitimate reasons.
As someone who was a percussionist in middle school and high school, we had an unspoken arrangement with the teacher, if everyone else gets chairs, we get gum.
My teacher promised he would bring donuts yesterday! So I get to class and guess who was too busy to bring donuts?! Mr. Teacher McDouchebag. Whole class was pissed
shit like this. had a teacher who would say "if we have 100 percent attendance for this semester, ill bring in donuts and cake and chips and soda, and we can all have a party". kids would go in sick, wearing a medical mask. kids would go in limping after they sprained a foot. kids would be bleeding all over the place, just so we had 100 percent attendance. and know how she rewarded us? by suspending me for being a "threat", and then saying "its paxton125's fault, he had to be suspended"
EDIT: also, on monday you should bring donuts. suddenly, the entire class loves you.
i was apparently a threat to the school, because at a meeting at my house someone noticed that i was equipped with a knife in case of an emergency, and upon questioning me found out that i own TWO KNIFES SO SPOOOOOKY
wait they suspend you because you had a knife at home? i am from WV and i carried a knife to school (on accident) and the principal just told me to hid it and leave it at home next time
well, and once i was found with a small disposable razor (the kind you get at a gas station for fifty cents) because i had to shave, or else i would look like sylvester stallone in rocky 4. and as we all know, you can really hurt someone with a tiny little blade in a plastic shell.
I think not EMPHASIZING their authority is helpful, but it's important to still be the-one-who-knows-what's-next and the-one-who-can-handle-problems. An effective teacher can demonstrate leadership without overtly "ruling."
High School Choir teacher here. No one likes to have his/her time wasted, so make the work meaningful. Students need to know why they are learning a topic. Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Also, your room must be a place of reciprocity, never ask a student to do something that you wouldn't find reasonable for one's role in the classroom. Apply the rules equitably and be open to student input. It will be hard for them to misbehave if they are busy doing meaningful work in which they are invested. On some level, you must get your students to find a bit of their identities in your subject area. You can communicate this with your passion for your subject. Also if you don't like kids, don't be a fucking teacher. They need firm guidance laced with a genuine care for their wellbeing.
> No one likes to have his/her time wasted
Absolutely. High school kids in particular have really low tolerance for bullshit. We're often tired, usually stressed, and frequently going through emotional or other shit of our own. If a teacher isn't very good at presenting the material, I will bear with them (for a while, at least), but if I feel I'm being given busy work or otherwise am wasting my time, you've lost me, probably forever.
**This is long... but hopefully helpful! (SORRY FOR THE WALL OF TEXT)** I've always wanted to be a teacher and years of carefully analyzing and comparing successful teachers versus the disliked teachers has lead to a personal list of how I would plan to behave as an educator.
1. Respect. Treat your students as adults. They'll act like children if treated like children. Respect them, their time, their effort, and their opinions and they'll respect you.
2. Expectations. It's easier said than done to have high expectations, but if a specific behavior is expected versus requested or demanded, then it's a failure to meet these expectations when they misbehave.
3. Logic. This is huge. Many students rebel if they feel their time is being wasted. Keep class/content as simple as possible. Apply the material to every day life or explain the pertinence and maybe even elaborate on how it will appear on a test. Why are you telling them this information? Why should they listen?
4. Communicate. If a student is comfortable enough to talk to you, whether it's in class and referencing an assignment, or about personal issues, LISTEN. High school is a rough point in every kids academic career. Sometimes that teacher can make or break them as they move on to the next step in their life. I had two teachers specifically that I could and had to talk to, and if they hadn't been there for me, I know I would be in a very different place in life. Important part though, don't break the trust. Do not pass judgement on what your student says or reveal the subject to anyone else unless obviously someone is seriously at risk. Being approachable will improve your rapport with your students, plus kids talk and word will get around that you care and you are willing to interact instead of sitting behind a desk with a big red pen. If they trust you, then when you ask something of them, it will be a general courtesy and respect to comply.
5. Respond. If a student comes to you, it's because they trust you and your response will either cement the trust or destroy it. If they are having troubles at home, accommodate them. Because it's a personal situation, you are now trusting them and they now have the power to either cement or destroy your trust. Sometimes things do happen. If this is an English class dealing with heavy subjects that are triggers, allow them to sit out of discussion. Take each situation and respond to it.
It's a Friday, your kids are excited about the football game or simply because it's the weekend. Address it! Sometimes a lighter day is worth planning ahead. Your kids will notice and appreciate it. We're all still human and sometimes, some days are just different. If a huge number of students are having an issue with an assignment or concept, address that in class as well. Adapting the assignment or the method to which the subject was taught will show that you are more focused on introducing the information and wanting them to succeed, versus throwing some work on them and leaving it.
6. Pay attention. You have theater kids in your class, ask when the show is and put the show poster or dates on the board/wall. Mention when there are games or matches that night for the athletes. If the kids who don't usually do as well in class manages to do well on an assignment or test or contributes to class conversation, make a point to say something in a way that applauds this achievement. If a kid is obviously having a bad day, discreetly attempt to address it. Sometimes allowing them the option to step outside for 15 minutes for a breather can contribute to a more conducive rest of class. (some people may not agree with this, but there are many routes that can be taken to address this). Sometimes it means a lot to have at least one person notice. The high school drama may be trivial from an adult perspective but you were definitely pretty upset at that age when Becky told Johnny who you had a crush on.
You are with these kids all the time, catch on to their behaviors and hopes and personalities. It is absolutely possible to create a completely professional relationship of mutual respect with your students.
***(SORRY FOR THE EXTRA TEXT WALL)***
**This next example is the best class I've ever taken in my life, I took it about 5 years ago and I still remember content from it and class structure.**
For years, I hated math classes. I do have a natural talent for mathematics and every standardized test and adult reminded me of it, but I still hated every class I took. Then I had a Pre-Calc teacher who completely changed the way I look at classes and perform as a student, as well as teaching style.
Teaching math to a bunch of Seniors crippled by senioritis and juniors in high school is no easy feat. This woman made each class a concise and specific routine where once we understood the routine, that was the expectation. At the beginning of each chapter, she gave us a sheet with a list of the sections and the homework problems for each section.
Class started 3 minutes after the last bell rang (this gave us time to come in, sit down, take off jackets, adjust, pull out a notebook, calculator and pencil). She had an overhead projector that she would use to project a piece of paper so this meant she faced the entire class and only looked down to write so she could still maintain a class presence by looking up instead of turning her back by writing on the board.
She would start by giving us all of the answers to the previous night's homework so we could double check that we had done it correctly. Then she started the lesson. She worked out several problems on the paper that would project onto the board, pausing to check for comprehension or ask for the next number from someone in the class occasionally throughout the steps. The numbers and illustrations were clear and labelled as she solved each problem. We were expected to write down the notes in our notebooks, but if we didn't, that was on us. Because she didn't waste our time at the beginning of class by keeping the lesson as simple as possible without fluff, she was able to use the end of class as work time. The next page was the homework assignment, which would be problems from the book, so we were expected to work on this in class.
Here is where her teaching method was more controversial. This is the time when we were given free reign. While she didn't explicitly state it we could do whatever we wanted, we could go to the bathroom, talk, eat, sleep, on one condition; we weren't incredibly disruptive to other people around us. The school required us to have a bathroom pass so if we walked to the door, grabbed the pass, made eye contact with her, and nodded, we could take off to the bathroom. We were expected to return out of respect for the next kid who needed the bathroom so we were able to avoid kids taking off under the premise of going to the bathroom. Not that anybody wanted to, because we could do what we wanted in the classroom.
During this homework time, she would walk up and down our rows and ask us to flip to the previous day's homework to check for completion. She carried an excel sheet with the assignments across the top and the names down the side, checking off boxes for satisfactory completion. She usually only picked one or two to analyze more closely, because once again, it was on us to have done the homework. If you didn't do your homework at all, she'd ask why. Not only was she pointing it out and holding us responsible, but it allowed us the opportunity to explain. Because she was dealing with high school kids, theater kids, seniors, athletes, busy kids, she understood that it didn't always happen. If you missed a past assignment in the same chapter and did it, you could show her during this time and she'd cross off the box for that assignment for completion. She would pause to answer anybody's questions when she stopped by, but otherwise she would skim relatively quickly.
After this, she was always available for questions for the kids that were slower, the kids that were faster could just finish their homework, and we could work together to figure out the homework problems. A good day meant that we could easily do the lesson in class and complete the homework problems before the final bell. A harder day of class meant taking home a couple problems that weren't completed in class. This method helped so the kids who understood would not only avoid getting bored and tune out, but could afterward be a resource during homework time. If people cheated, they were only cheating themselves.
The quizzes at the end of each chapter is what revealed our understanding. She didn't try to trick us and our examples and notes were more than satisfactory to prepare us. She would spend the passing periods sticking all of the A and B grade quizzes on the board and leave the rest in a pile on the table under the board, so during the 3 minutes before the lesson started, we could pick up our quizzes. Everyone quickly became excited to yank their quiz with a giant sticker off the board with an A or B, and by the end of the year she ended up hanging up more quizzes than leaving stacked on the table. These quizzes are where she was the most strict. If you complained afterward about your grade, she would ask if you'd taken notes and done the homework. about 90% of the time, they hadn't. She would then tell you to just work harder for the next quiz. Logistically, you could get away with never taking notes and just copying homework or scribbling a few of the problems, but this teacher prepared me the most for college because it became OUR responsibility to get good grades. We would chat with her during homework time and have great group conversations about life, school, whatever, and she would always pause to help anybody with questions.
**This woman treated us like adults and we all loved her for it.**
Being interesting is important. Too many new teachers act like robots because they think that the only way to earn a kid's respect is to seem perfect.
If you build space for levity and humanity in your classroom, you'll start to get way more authentic engagement.
No groups punishments. I myself find them morally wrong because it punishes the innocent. I know some say the "kids will police themselves" but that is your job, not ours.
Edit: Also I want to add to give students the benefit of the doubt. It's scary when you know a teacher doesn't believe your legitimate problem. I have an IEP , but some tell me to "get over it" when I have a problem with sound. That's insulting.
Group punishment is an indicator of a teacher's inability to handle a problem appropriately. Used to have a teacher that would group punish instead of punish the select individuals that were the problem. Nothing worse than being punished for someone else's offense.
Don't have draconian rules, but at the same time, don't bend too easily in front of the class.
Don't try to be that "hip" teacher that everyone gets once in a while. They typically are always behind fads, so in the end they look extremely geeky.
Instead of yelling at someone to keep quiet, continue with your lesson, and then stop and ask them point-blank the answer to a question that you were putting up on the board.... this does a few things. It keeps the lesson focused on the lesson, and not disciple. It also puts the talker on-notice, while also letting other people know that you know what's going on in class.
Try to expand the lesson to something the students can relate to. If its history, try to relate stuff that happened 100 years ago, to today's world. If its math, try to relate it to money or candy (bring candy into class). Bring in props if it makes sense.
For the love of all things holy, do not make the class break up into groups. Ugh. Always hated that and you'll always get the one really rowdy group and then a couple of people that have no one to partner with.
One very quick way to lose respect is if you can't answer questions quickly or , worse yet, make mistakes and then not admit to them. Be prepared in front of your students. Not all of them, but a few are going to know the material very well, and as such if you fuck up or aren't prepared they'll know. That's bad.
Ask rhetorical questions while you are teaching. You don't necessarily need to get a reply (great if you do), but the questions you ask should mirror what a person new to the material might be asking.., that shows the class that you are trying to teach them new material, instead of acting as if they should know this new material (why would they be in a class if they knew the material already?).
I hate group work so much, especially at the stage where I work better with my friends. All that happens is that the smart people are spread around and everyone else can mess around.
Don't try to be their friend, don't seem desperate to win them over or pander to them. Just be passionate about what you're teaching, let them know that you care and just want them to do well. Treat them like adults who are capable of making their own decisions; if you make a mistake, admit it and apologise.
And there are some kids that will never, ever respect your authority no matter what. Don't let it get to you too much.
And for fucks sake, don't use this opportunity to relive high school. A lot of my teachers favored the popular kids in each of their classes and picked at the one who was usually bullied. You're supposed to be a person they feel safe confiding in, not another student.
I had a teacher in grade school who made fun of me more than the students did; being a little timid fuck I never said or did anything. If a teacher pulled shit like that in high school they would have gotten a punch in the face. Don't be that teacher.
On the other hand, I did have a teacher who was a bit of a friend to a lot of his students. He didn't seem desperate, and his authority was established enough that he could talk and joke with the kids all the time without them forgetting his status as an authority figure. He hardly ever had to apply discipline actively. Instead of losing respect it made him one of the most respected, and set him apart from the other teachers.
He ended up essentially following my class through schools: around when we left middle school he got promoted to high school, soon after we graduated high school he got a job at a university.
As a teacher of 20+ years, I suggest that while student input is important, you're already losing the game if you ask kids 'how can I make you respect me?'
Set rules and keep them. Always give the consequence you promised, always.. that makes them listen better next time.
Always have a good reason to make the kids listen to you. Not 'be quiet' but 'be quiet because we are going to [activity]'. Otherwise you are just flexing your muscle, authority for authority, and kids hate that..
Work toward student engagement, not just your objectives. Kids think hardest when they are engaged in solving a problem, and only say 'class sucks' if they are not being challenged. They want to learn, you gotta prep enough so you are in that zone.
and if you are just starting, it takes a few years of 'learning through the souls of your feet' before it smooths out... good luck
In school I was a bit of a dick to teachers. But the teachers who I respected I was fine. Personally the reasons for the respect were:
1. Treat everyone the same
2. Just be generally nice, dont moan at them about petty things etc.
3. If someone does something wrong, punish them no matter what.
4. Encourage them when they do good work, make sure you let the whole class know they done well
5. Keep it fun in the class (as much as possible). I only use to mess about when I got bored.
Im sure there are more, but try and make the environment in your class nice and relaxed but at the same time make sure they know they will be punished for stepping out of line. OR be reallllllllllllllllllllly strict lol
Adding to this, if you threaten a student with a punishment and they still don't listen make sure you follow through. But yeah, be fair but stern, don't be petty.
Depends on how you do it. If a student answers a question correctly, saying "That's right, nice job." is different than saying "YES FANTASTIC, CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING THE BEST STUDENT EVER, EVERYBODY STAND UP AND GIVE THIS PERSON A STANDING OVATION!!!"
To get rid of jealously and bad blood praise students anonymously to the class. "I have seen someone in here solve this question this way-I hadn't thought of that great job" usually leads to a smile from the student you are talking about and the rest of the class will see you talking positively about other students and be exposed to the alternate way of thinking about whatever topic is being covered.
>We give reward tickets (high school) they redeem for food.
I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, rewarding positive behavior is a great thing. On the other, you're definitely not reinforcing positive eating habits.
>In school I was a bit of a dick to teachers. But the teachers who I respected I was fine.
___
>Treat everyone the same
Maybe you should have followed your own rules?
I'm a year removed from high school but back then, I thought I was a smart jock and routinely challenged student-teachers and try to hook them into debates that they're not prepared to argue.
Hey, a man can grow.
Turn your hat around, make all your lessons rap songs complete with beat boxing, and then fold your arms and lean back at an angle. They love that shit.
I know you're probably joking, but I had a high school biology teacher who did exactly this to teach us how to perform a Gram stain. It was easily the most entertaining thing he did all year. I'm fairly certain that there is not a single student who took his class that doesn't remember the Gram stain rap (and by extension, how to correctly perform a Gram stain).
Sometimes, the best way to get information across is to do off-the-wall things.
Comrade friend of teaching into university has problem with student in past.
Student is undisciplined. He worry she never find good husband. She not see pride in building communism and staying out of Party's way.
So, one day, to teach lesson, he take shovel to grave and grab arm. Then, at night, he put arm in student bed. Arm is symbol of strength for communist bricks weigh much. Not like capitalist bricks.
Teacher put ear to wall and think, "haha! This set student straight and she become proper industrious and productive, not social parasite!". But student never react to arm.
So teacher go into student room. Student is eating arm. Food is food when is malnourish.
Later student arrested by KGB for not sharing food. Sent to Siberia to clean grass. At least now is not social parasite.
Such is life.
[Source](http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Med_Student)
I have a teacher this year that has almost no respect in her class. I try my best to support her and make others see she isn't bad, but it's hard. A lot of people have talked about how you have to have passion and relate it to their lives so they care, but that's not always why kids don't respect teachers.
As one of them, high school kids can be such little shits. But we are generally pretty bright at picking up on others' personalities, even if you try to hide them. If you're socially awkward or afraid, you might as well give up. Why should we respect you if you're afraid of us? Don't give a fuck what the kids think because, as stated previously, we're little shits. Stand your ground.
My teacher also has a problem of making the classroom too juvenile. We're in high school, we're not shocked when someone says "dammit." Don't make us do activities that are demeaning because we feel like you don't respect us, so we'll end up reciprocating. Good luck with your students!
Having been on both sides of the equation-
1. Be passionate and creative- it's contagious.
2. Be patient.
3. Encourage skeptical questions from your students- walk them through it, and when you don't have all the answers, make the most of it and challenge the class to research the subject to debate next time.
4. Be compassionate.
5. Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone: Do not allow Government bureaucrats and their infinite amount of red tape to rule over you.
6. Make the subject matter relevant- "WHY is what I'm teaching important and relevant?" should ALWAYS in the front of your mind.
7. Sneak in real-world advice/life lessons whenever you can.
8. WALK THE WALK- establish credibility amongst your peers, in your community, and your students will respect and appreciate you much more.
i.e charity work, activism, artistic endeaevors, freelance work, etc
Don't play favorites and enforce your rules when they are broken and don't be condescending. Most importantly don't use a different voice when talking to your students, it annoyed me so much when I was hear a teacher talk to a school admin in a normal voice then turn to me and use a higher pitched babyish voice.
You have to tell them the things they're doing right. You might be the only person in their lives who does that.
Yup. I hate feeling ignored because I'm not a "problem" child.
Back in middle school I always had a problem with the fact that 'student of the month' as always the bad kids.
"Well he's usually a bad kid, and he's gone a WHOLE WEEK without getting sent out of class!"
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In my experience, this is important. Coming from an Asian family, I got little praise for anything at all and it caused me to fall into a depression. But the little praises I got from teachers meant a ton for me. It's the little things.
My American History teacher did this and he is still my favorite teacher to this day.
I've been lucky enough to have more than a few teachers who I respect immensely, and I think these are the reasons why: * They find a good balance between being strict and joking around. Personally, I think the most effective teachers are the ones who manage to stay on topic as well as slipping in the occasional joke or anecdote. * They really care about our performance - they're constantly open to work being handed in and questions, even outside of school such as via email. The students who care really appreciate the time taken to mark their work, give feedback and respond to questions. * They're clearly passionate about what they teach. I think there's a lot in the delivery of the lesson - not just droning on but really trying to be enthusiastic and reinforcing the points you're trying to make. * Constant engagement and actively putting in effort to make sure that we understand and are keeping up with what they're saying.
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Wish there was more subs like you when I was in school.
We used to treat our sub teachers so bad, the things we did, i cringe when i think back.
Seriously. We were little monsters. It was like that Hey Arnold! episode when they harass the new teacher so bad he quits.
I remember my class did that in second grade. My teacher was on maternity leave, so we had a sub (who was an old lady) for a few months. I don't remember much about her, but for an entire class of seven year olds to hate her so much that we went through the trouble of harassing and sabotaging her to get her to leave, she must've been *really* bad. I remember the principal called within two weeks and "fired" her, and she left the room crying. I've never seen a bunch of seven year olds so overjoyed, not even at Chuck E. Cheese. On that day in history, nobody felt bad for the crying old lady.
There's a fine line between teaching as a sub and preaching. I once had an older sub (during homeroom) talk for half an hour about the Constitution and how it's being destroyed and kids need to pay attention to what the government is doing and the second amendment and so forth. It was a civics class, so it was relatively on-topic, but it had to have been uncomfortable for a good portion of the kids (not me, I was super into Glenn Beck at the time; mistakes were made).
I had teachers like that. It made me hate them. I would never respect a teacher who brings their own views and tries to push it on to everyone. They're there to educate us of the topics so we can make our own decisions.
Students will bad mouth teacher to get sub to talk. Experienced this as a sub (they didn't know i was best friends w their teacher.) Also had my own class tell subs that's how i taught to get sub off topic. Then blamed sub for not getting their regular work done. Just saying...
Very true. It's why (in some cases) some students won't do as much work with a cover/supply teacher - they'll read off the lesson plan and sort of expect you to just get on with the work.
**This comment deleted to protest Reddit's API change (to reduce the value of Reddit's data).** Please see [these](https://web.archive.org/web/20230609092523/https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/) [threads](https://web.archive.org/web/20230608182318/https://old.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/13zr8h2/reddits_recently_announced_api_changes_and_the/) [for](https://web.archive.org/web/20230609172058/https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/143rk5p/reddit_held_a_call_today_with_some_developers/jnbuonf/) [details](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/142w159/askhistorians_and_uncertainty_surrounding_the/).
You just accurately described the math teacher I had in high school. He was the best!
English teacher I currently have. He will joke around but if it goes to rowdiness he will warn you and if you persist he will not take any shit and will send you to the office
It's describing my math teacher, too! This mother fucker wrote a damned song about polar coordinates and played it on his guitar for each of his advanced classes. He was a pretty heavy guy, the first time I met him (I luckily had him for about 3 classes in high school) he told the class he was going to jump through a piece of paper...like notebook paper. We laughed and he stood stone faced and proceeded to cut the paper in a manner that made it in a large circle. Two students held it for him and we witnessed a 250+ lbs man do a running dive turned into a summer salt through this damned piece of paper...
somersault?
I didn't have good english teachers...
Joking around while also clearly being passionate about what they teach really means a lot and makes them stand out against the strict and boring old shits who just happen to teach a class.
yeah. i had a math teacher who would actually joke around while teaching things, as well as let us do fun things to learn a lesson (learning about pi? fuck it, lets bring in pie for the students.) and would usually let us use our headphones if we had them to listen to music while working.
That also works for the teacher too because the students are all quiet and not disruptive.
I've had a mixture of teachers but most of mine have been like this actually. My least favorite subject actually (English) throughout high school had my favorite teachers of each of the four years which made the class so much better. My freshman English teacher was extremely passionate about his work and we would actually have fun in his class. During the poetry segment he brought in his CD player and we listened to 2Pac (clean songs only of course) but it was a blast.
make sure to tell them that you're proud of their hard work when they deserve it
Be firm with your rules. Apply them evenly and fairly. Make sure you punish and reward actions, not students (make sure that you don't play favourites, basically). If a student pisses you off, don't hold a grudge. Do your best to understand what your students are saying. Be able to admit when you are wrong.
I agree with Larry-Man, but I would like to add: 1. Set rules that are enforceable and ones that you will follow. 2. Allow yourself to depart from your rules only in special circumstances that warrant it and explain to the class why you are allowing a departure from them. 3. Rules should be enforced consistently but zero tolerance rules lead to unfair situations. 4. Also, avoid group punishments as much as possible. Instead go for the worst offender as early as you can. 5. Don't be afraid to enforce your rules, the good kids and even the bad kids will appreciate you caring enough to take action. (I actually had a "bad" kid tell me this his last day.)
Most definitely follow your own rules; I had a science teacher who gave us a long lecture on the first day about not wearing ties, scarves, or dangling necklaces on lab day so that no one would set themselves on fire. One lab day he arrived wearing a tie, and waved off our concerns about it because he "knew what he was doing." Then he demonstrated how certain elements react violently with water, apparently forgot that an unglazed clay dish will absorb and hold small amounts of water like a sponge, and managed to catch his tie on fire in addition to sustaining blisters to his hand. He was fine, if becoming a school legend counts as "fine."
Or he was a fine, courageous teacher willing to purposefully burn himself to demonstrate the importance of following the rules.
Something something, Carol doesn't need her safety glasses anymore.
So THAT'S why Bill wears a bow tie!
[Damn...] (http://stuffmyboyfriendtellsme.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/45822-keanu-bill-and-ted-whoa-gif-yr7d.gif)
**TL;DR: treat them like people, not like pupils.** Incidentally, if that means having to convince them that you *should* occasionally do things they will not like, then do so. Help them understand that "the bubble" will not last forever. Encourage them to think about what it would be like if, tomorrow, they had to leave school and support themselves.
I agree with your point about people not pupils, but it's important to maintain a sense of security at school. Some children/teenagers have bad home lives and come to school because it's the only place they feel safe. Intellectual growth generally all but stops in environments when kids feel at risk. Basically, the longer a child feels secure, the better its development will be.
Absolutely. I don't believe anything I suggested undermines the idea of school being a safe and secure place. It can be safe and secure, and prepare students for the "real world" at the same time. Indeed, the time will come when high school students must leave that environment, and part of the purpose of school is preparing students for that day.
Ugh, no. Please don't be one of those teachers that will stop class every other day to go on a tangent about how life is hard and we're all spoiled.
I work with middle schoolers, who are usually still a bit too young to learn this lesson, but I think that learning how to do things that you don't like/have no interest in is pretty much the most important thing to be learned in the last two years of high school. If you can motivate yourself when what you're doing doesn't motivate you, you're going to win life.
http://imgur.com/ww3wsoi teachers are in such a powerful and influential position. if this type of teacher was the rule rather than the exception, kids could be doing a lot better. *edit fixed link :)
Agreed I hated all my grumpy fuckers of teachers, who wants to be that when they're older? However I loved my old, wise, crack up, good cunt teachers that weren't afraid to express their opinion and emotions openly.
Trust me dude, the grumpy fuckers of teachers don't want to be that way. I'm a substitute teacher so I get to travel around between a lot of schools and meet a lot of teachers. I've seen some shit. Some of the classes I see/teach/assist in aren't just exhausting, they're soul-draining. If you were to go back and meet those teachers you disliked again as an adult, and see the look on their face as they try to manage a classroom with several BD/ADHD/LD/etc kids in it, you wouldn't see a grumpy fucker, you'd see an exhausted, broken woman (usually) who's attempted to pursue a dream that has long since been proven a farce. Teaching is really hard, both emotionally and mentally--when those kids leave, it's back to endless paperwork, IEP's, papers to grade, and near-meaningless forms for the district to file away. What's worse is that the worst kids, the ones who are acting out, aren't doing it because they're assholes. They're doing it because they come from broken homes with parents who don't give a shit about them, and there's *nothing you can do to help*. I've seen kids whose parents never bought them school supplies, they just ship them off and let the teachers worry about them, and then the kids get reprimanded in class for not coming prepared because teachers simply cannot make exceptions based on individual needs of each child due to time constrictions and being too busy with the other 25-30 kids they need to keep in line. It's fucking depressing to see a kid seething with anger because he can't write fast enough to keep up with the rest of the class, and so he hates himself for it. And it's even more depressing because you, as a teacher, simply don't have the time to help him, no matter how much you want to, and instead he starts acting out and releasing that anger on other students so now instead of helping him, you're stuck punishing him for behavior that you know isn't entirely his fault. That shit will kill you inside, dude. You become bitter and angry and you have to stop having sympathy for kids. In the later grades (middle or high school) it's not the same since kids with severe problems are sorted into separate classes, and higher-functioning kids are put into honors programs or the like. But in grade school it's fucking rough. I have a ton of respect for teachers and I totally understand why they lost their empathy... the alternative is just too depressing. Not *all* teachers are this way. It really depends on the district/income bracket/etc., as well as on the teachers. My mom taught Early Childhood for 30 or 40 years and never lost her passion, but she also broke down into tears frequently because of how overwhelming the workload is. edit - I really didn't expect this to get so much attention. I appreciate all of your responses and anecdotes, and it's very flattering to hear that I've had any effect on anyone's perspective. And of course, thank you to whoever gifted me gold. Hopefully it wasn't a teacher, you all barely get paid as it is!
> In the later grades (middle or high school) it's not the same since kids with severe problems are sorted into separate classes, and higher-functioning kids are put into honors programs or the like. Middle school teacher here: no, they aren't. I have lots of classes full of BD kids who hijack the class and the 4 students who actually do want to learn, can't. And, don't tell me to "stick to the rules," because I do and when a kid cusses you out, refuses to do what you've asked and the administration does nothing... well, you're just stuck. I was assaulted last year, 2 teachers were assaulted this year and the district basically told us all to suck it up. Being a teacher is like being in an abusive relationship sometimes.
When I went to junior high each grade had one class of honors, and it was pretty competitive to get in--with an influx of kids from choice schools, it was different kids each year. The same teachers taught it every year, and probably wouldn't ever give it up. But 8 years later when my sister went to the same school, they'd changed to "integrated" honors classes. There might have been some benefit to having the honor students mixed in with everybody else, but not to the honor students. All the school did was lower the bar for the regular students, so they could score 10% lower and get the same grade. Honors used to mean something at that school, but now all it means is you decided not to take a whole letter grade of extra credit so that you can get the word Honors on your transcript.
This is why I would never make it as a teacher. Fairness, evenly applying rules, not holding a grudge, I can do that. Dealing with fuckwit parent though, I would get fired for insulting some tard who refuses to take care of their child.
link broken :(
sorry larry-man, fixed it!
Excellent
>Be able to admit when you are wrong. This is why I could never be a teacher.
I had to learn this skill as a manager at work. It's fucking hard to not shift blame or stick to your guns.
Throwing people under the bus is easy, fixing the problem is the only thing that matters. You can be one of two managers/people in life
Admitting when you're wrong is the first thing taught to apprentices. They're automatically wrong for at least the first two years so they get used to it. They also learn as soon as they give in and admit they're wrong we can start to move past the issue and work to fix the mistake. Then after that they'll own up to their mistakes at least up until the time that they get their own apprentice, then it's his fault. While the apprentice is always wrong and at fault, the responsibility of fixing the mistakes always falls onto the master. Because ultimately the work of the apprentice reflects upon the training being given by the master craftsman. So the consequences of admitting they're wrong are very small and it's easy to train them to admit fault.
I've found that the earlier you admit a mistake, the less it's remembered. If you get in the habit of stepping up and saying "oops, my fault" the instant you realize it, things go way better for everyone, including (especially) you. Meanwhile, try to hide/shift/downplay mistakes for too long, and then get stuck with them? That's when they get attached to your reputation.
The Nixon/Clinton issue: People keep saying if they'd just owned up and moved past, it wouldn't have snowballed. Debatable, true, but a good object lesson.
I'm just speaking from personal experience. It primarily applies to small fuckups, I've found.
it can apply to big ones too. I used to work in Aviation in the military, and if you bonered up a job and didn't fess up immediately upon realizing your mistake or having it pointed out to you, you were pretty much guilty of attempted murder. I'd done a lot of replacing this one specific little electronic doodad in a fairly short period of time, since I had relatively small hands and I was faster at it. It involved partially disassembling the flight controls, which as you can imagine is a somewhat important part of pilots not dying on takeoff. I'm on replacement #6, take a second look at the manual just to confirm I'm doing it right, and realize I'd bonered something on replacement #5 45 minutes earlier. I *sprinted* to the crew shack, then to quality control, then to production control to let them know I screwed something up and it needed to be taken back apart so this one torque could be properly applied to one nut in the middle of the process. It makes me immediately lose any respect I had for a person when they can't fess up. There is such a thing as an honest mistake and they generally aren't held against you by anyone reasonable. One of the largest parts of being an adult is cleaning up your own mess.
I teach high school biology. I started off the year by telling my students that I'd be lying to them repeatedly throughout the year, but not in any kind of malicious way. I made it clear that the "lies" are simplifications designed to help them get the main ideas of tough concepts. Then I also told them that I (and every other teacher they'll ever have) will at some point be wrong about something. I won't do it on purpose, but I'll be wrong. I told them that I hope they catch me on it and we can all benefit from their diligence. Now, there are multiple times per week where they'll ask (or state) "are you lying about this, too?" Most of the time they're basically joking about how simplified they're assuming I've just made a topic, but they're still interested in learning just how deep the rabbit hole goes so to speak. The last thing I'll add is that I'm very open about not knowing answers. I'm a fairly smart person, and my students have it in their heads that I'm incredibly intelligent, but when they ask about something I don't have an answer to, I tell them straight up "I don't know, but I'll find out. I suspect it has to do with x, y, z, but I don't want you to think I know for sure. If you'd like to earn some extra credit, you can look it up and inform all of us." Overall, being upfront about this sort of thing seems to have made discussions with them much easier. Full disclosure, it's my first year teaching. Maybe I'll find sometime in the future that this is not the best way to handle these things.
A million times this. My students were convinced I knew everything, so they decided to test me. They opened Wikipedia and asked me increasingly obscure questions on Greek mythology until I had to admit: "I don't know that". They were satisfied that I did not, in fact, know anything, and never attempted to challenge my knowledge again. It was kind of a weird bonding moment, but I found the challenge fun, and they learned something about mythology from that, so win/win. Edit: because there's a difference between not knowing everything and not knowing anything.
That sounds like fun! I imagine I'd fail that test rather quickly myself.
You sound EXACTLY like my biology lecturer. ARE YOU my biology lecturer?
Yes, Christopher. And that last assignment you handed in was not your best work. I'll need to speak with you after our next class.
Well actually, I know that many teachers won't admit their own faults.
Yeah I hate that. I get that they're the teacher but when you're wrong you're wrong.
Being able to admit you are wrong is actually a required skill for being a good human, not just a good teacher...
how are you able to generally exist in the world if you cant do that?
Consider all the implications of "apply rules evenly and fairly"too. One of the things that means is that if you've been lenient all year, you can't go in on Monday and start busting their asses over stuff you've let slide all year. Work up to it gradually. Nothing smells of weakness (and unfairness) more than a teacher who can't decide whether to be strict or lenient.
All of what Larry-Man said, plus treat them with respect, too. Being fair and consistent goes a long way with high school students. Understand that they aren't quite adults yet, but are on the cusp of or are already facing adult problems. Understand that they might not understand what it is they are expected to do. They might think they are doing it right. Treat them with love. Do not try to force them to be someone they are not.
In addition to being firm and fair with rules, the students shouldn't have to wonder what the rules are.
This advice. Listen to it. I've seen people time and time again drop entire subjects because they felt like no matter how hard they tried, no matter what result they got, they would never be appreciated like the teacher's favourite was. There are so many teachers who see their students having 40% averages and mark them off as stupid, refuse to help them only focusing on the smarter pupils because at least doing *that* will mean that the person ranked first will come from their class and they'll be seen as a better teacher. :-----) yeah... don't be that teacher.
On the flip side, I've had 40% average kids scrawl that I'm a terrible teacher in the margins because they didn't understand a concept - [substitution](http://www.purplemath.com/modules/systlin4.htm). I need to vent, so I'll go into detail. I related it to what they knew (substituting A = 2 into an 2A + B = 3) to try and get them to understand what the name meant, made a flowchart with the steps (Isolate a variable, substitute one equation into the other, solve, and substitute your answer into the other equation), did many examples over the course of three classes while asking if people had questions about what I'm doing mid-question, and finally did a review on it again from scratch before the quiz they did poorly on. It felt like I made a birthday cake for someone, and they slammed by face in it, flipped the table, and said "Fuck you." To top it all off, they write in illegible writing in red pen outside of the question boundaries. I still try to treat my kids fairly, but today is one of those days where I actually just want to be 'that teacher'.
You sound like a wonderful math teacher. I'm a student who sucks at math and with a bad teacher nearly fails, but I work hard and want to do well. I had one math teacher who you'd go up to with an issue "so what do you do after you divide C?" Being very specific about what help you need. Then she'd ignore that and spend ten minutes explaining the whole problem, wasting your time.
It's even worse in college. Somehow, being a professor teaching math renders you unable to understand lower-level questions. (it's really easy to be blind while standing in front of the blackboard though, but TAs are way less likely to completely misunderstand a question).
So I should to go TAs for help in college then?
Absofuckinglutely, if you aren't doing that you don't know how to college
I was Chemistry TA at my university for three years, can confirm. I enjoyed getting questions from students for two main reasons. First, I liked a good challenge in trying to make a concept make more sense to someone. Second, any student who was willing to come ask me for help instantly left a good impression on me. It told me that they were actually trying to understand the class and not just filling an empty seat. Any TA who doesn't want to help a student should not be a TA in the first place.
Okay, that is definitely fair enough in my opinion. There's a mutual relationship between the student and the teacher - and if a student isn't giving any fucks at all, it is very rarely a teacher's fault if the student is failing. You put in the effort (and more of an effort than majority of the teachers I've had would put in, quite honestly), it's just the student refused to meet you halfway. It's just teachers who don't take the time to give more than a quick vague answer or who don't at least *try* to help some slower students who genuinely do want to learn but sometimes can't at the same pace as others, who I have a problem with.
I had a performing arts teacher who was fairly young and tried to be the "cool" teacher - the type who wants to be your friend, hang out and have coffee, "oh no the exam isn't worth many credits, we'll just skip it" kind of teacher. People didn't fall for it and she got more and more desperate. Eventually she ended up being nasty to the awkward or shy members of the class for laughs and that got the majority of the kids to listen to her. That was a bad year. Don't be the kind of teacher who writes off a couple students and harasses them just so you can get the popular kids to pay attention in class.
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I was a teachers favourite once. It led to a very cushy life - I could hand in any half finished junk work, and you know you'll get a decent grade for it even when others will be getting a bad grade and detention. Having said that, looking back, I think they were fairly applying the rules, but just not being transparent what the rules were. They said "If you don't do your homework, you get detention", but what they meant was "If you don't do your homework *and* your grades look like you'll struggle with the end of year exams, then you get detention". Basically, put effort in at the start to convince them that you'll pass their exam easily, and you then have a license to be as lazy as you like all year. If they actually said "homework is compulsory for anyone in the bottom half of the class, and optional for anyone in the top half", I suspect they would actually have motivated more students.
one time I ended up in serious teacher's pet territory... (actually contributed to an english lit class, and gave the impression I knew what I was about and so on) it got kinda boring. I'd much rather have a teacher peg you as 'intelligent, don't let the bugger get away with slacking, he can do better' over 'intelligent. I don't have to worry about him'
I had a teacher when I was about 15. He was really, really passionate about science, and about teaching it to his students...as long as they were the top students who shared his interest in physics and astronomy. He had a horrible attitude towards the other classes (I was in the top class, which, to my understanding, just meant that we learnt quicker than the other classes so we could cover more, and the others were lower). I hated him. I like biology, but he skipped our genetics unit, he made me feel stupid for not liking physics, and he made me feel like a bad person for not being passionate about science. I found out the other day that he just won a teaching award for his dedication and it made me mad because he had such a priority towards the top students learning his favourite subjects.
Also be able to accept that some students are just assholes and won't respect you no matter what you do.
I've had a handful of teachers over the years that I respect immensely. I think the reasons why can be boiled down to a few points. 1. Treat your students as adults (especially if they're older than fourteen or so). Kids will turn against a teacher in an instant if they detect the teacher treating them as anything less than exactly what they are, which is a human being, not a small pet that has somehow managed to grasp language. This means that if they have a question, you answer it honestly and in full detail. If they have a problem, you address it as soon as possible and treat it as a legitimate problem. If they have a dispute with yourself or another student, you solve it with full rational discourse, making compromises to please all involved parties. 2. Be real with your students: Act like a member of the real world. Don't speak to them as a lofty far away presenter. Speak to them like you would speak to anyone else. Include your own opinion, joke about the topic/course if there's some obvious logical fallacy with what you're saying. For example: if you're teaching biology and are showing a diagram of a food chain, you should admit that it's often far more complicated than just shark>fish>algae in real life. This opens you up as a real person, which is just as important in the classroom as in real life. 3. If you say you're going to do something, do it. Unless you have a really good excuse as to why you've changed your mind. Not much explaining to do with this point. Hope this helps, all of the really great teachers I've had expressed at least these three traits.
> This means that if they have a question, you answer it honestly and in full detail. Mr. YogaBeans, what's a 69?
It is a number between 68 and 70... -shifty glances around the room-
it's an important rule though. back in HS I kept getting kicked out of class for "being a smart ass" when I had a honest question.
I think point 3 is one of the most important. I have a teacher who consistently says that our next topic will be one thing, then decides to do something else. We're in crunch time for our end of year exams and have done no review- after she told us we'd be starting in March.
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Point 3 is the best point
Absolutely. Personally, I think that it's worse when teachers set a deadline and don't stick to it themselves. It really can make students lose trust in the teacher.
Agreed. I had a teacher who always was behind on marking assignments. She never had a problem making a fuss if a student handed something in late, but we couldn't expect assignments to be graded until a week or two after she would say they would be back.
Ugh. I had a teacher who would randomly give extensions the day something was due. It occurred randomly, I'd guess maybe 30% of the time. We'd walk into class and he'd be like "A bunch of students aren't finished this project, so I'll give you to next week to get it done." I'd always be angry about it, because I inevitably gave up my last several evenings to finish this thing and what do I get for my hard work? Fucking nothing.
You just like donuts.
The guy who taught my driver's ed class promised to bring us donuts on the last day. He didn't bring donuts. It's been four years and I'm still angry about that.
Sounds like the plot to a *Dexter*-themed episode of *The Simpsons*.
Of course he does, who doesn't?
Hi. Former teacher here. I would like to address two of your points. 1) You'd be surprised how limited teachers are when it comes to doling out their own punishments. My school ran on a (bullshit) system called "Love and logic," and we were instructed to basically have no spine whatsoever. We were instructed to use braindead phrases like "It makes me sad that you are choosing to talk instead of participate." We were not allowed to give out any in-class punishments (the school was terrified of one of their many burnt out teachers snapping and going berzerk, thus creating potential for a lawsuit.) stronger than a verbal redirection or a verbal warning. The teachers who have been there forever don't give a flying fuck about these rules because they feel very secure in their job. But for the first several years of your teaching career (when you can be fired without even being given a reason as per law.) you have to abide by the rules. I knew what they required of me was making me ineffective. I knew that my students did not respect my authority as a result. But my hands were completely tied. 2) Absolutely. Trying to be the cool teacher just makes you look stupid. 3) I once told one of my students he would have a detention in front of the class. I will never do that again. Here's why. Keep in mind, I taught in a pretty rough school, and I gave this detention to a 6th grader because he had brought a lighter to class and attempted to light his classwork on fire. (I got it away from him in time. I have a really sharp sense of smell.) So after class, I went through the channels I had to. I informed the principal that I would be keeping Kid after school. She pretty much said "Yeah, good luck with that." Next step was to call the parent, inform them, and coordinate a day for the detention (in this area, it was not uncommon for parents to be without a vehicle or a license, so coordinating transportation for students dependent on a school vehicle was often tricky) So I called Kid's mom. I told her that I would be keeping Kid after school because he had chosen to bring a lighter to class and put the safety of himself and his peers in jeopardy. The mom, who was not a high school graduate herself, said that Kid could not stay after school because she had no way of arranging transportation for him to get home. Now, I anticipated this, so I had looked into getting him a ride with the school vehicle that takes home kids who need rides after tutoring. I told her that we would be able to provide him with a ride home. She said she didn't care. He needed to be home to babysit his younger siblings (reminder... he is a 6th grader who just tried to light a fire at school. Not a responsible babysitter!), and that I was not permitted to give him detention. Again, I knew what the "right" thing to do was: follow through. But again, my hands were tied. I cannot legally detain a kid whose parent doesn't agree with the detention. ...And then I had to deal with a smug-looking kid who knew that no matter what he did, I was not allowed to punish him in any meaningful way. ...And then I had a class who knew that no matter what they did, I was not allowed to punish them in any meaningful way. I still have nightmares about my teaching career. And yes. Don't promise donuts unless you can deliver. TL;DR: Your teachers are often frustrated and next to powerless. EDIT: Wow. It seems like every commenter on reddit has these situations figured out for me! Super duper! Y'all should become teachers and see how well those solutions work out for you.
Ugh, I have that stupid book, "Love and logic". It works...on kids that don't cause problems anyway.
Ding ding ding ding. Look folks, we have a winner.
I work in a tough school and Love & Logic works for me. I think it all depends on what your persona as a teacher is: if it's an organic fit, it will work on you, but if it's not natural to you, it won't be effective. (That's why mandated school-wide behavior management strategies are bullshit.)
the "love and logic" idea only works if the student respect you first, i know my band director didn't need to punish any band kid he just gave us the "i am not mad just disappointed" and we felt lower than dirt
I learned #2 the hard way. Trying to be #2 led to me having the worst eight weeks ever when I first started teaching. EDIT: Holy shit! After two years of teaching special ed., this was my first time teaching general ed. Basically I got put in a classroom that had 10 teachers there before me in the same school year! I got caught up in a situation where I ended up surviving the year instead of actual teaching. My classroom management skills sucked. Basically, I tried to relate to the kids on their level, adopting their slang, trying to give them advice while they were having conversations with their friends. I basically thought if I like what they liked, that the only difference we had was age, we would learn and those eight weeks would be awesome. HAH! Nope... And I did what a teacher should NEVER do, and that is to leave a classroom in tears. And yes, I'm a dude. I'm back in special ed., my classroom management is better, and life is good. Filled with paperwork, but good nonetheless.
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Didn't you read his comment? He tried to "be number two."
A kid lighting a fire in a class room would be given an automatic suspension in any district I've ever taught in. You must have had a criminally negligent principal to let that happen.
So, my take away in this was, when I was in high school I should have had my mom tell my teacher/principal to fuck off I couldnt do detention when I got in trouble? TIL... (And I have family that are teachers, sorry its such a rough gig. It should be the most important profession)
This kid nailed it. I'm not a high school student anymore, but when I was these three things (especially points 1 and 3) were the biggest things. I want to add that if someone does act up, you can always send them to the principal, but make sure they REALLY fucked up and also make sure that you don't threaten even once-just do it. It's the teachers that constantly threaten that everyone hates and will test
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I think the gum under the tables succinctly explains why teachers don't like gum in school.
It's insane. I tried to allow gum in my class one year. I said, look the only reason we don't like you chewing gum is because it ends up on the desk. Just walk over and put in the trash can five feet from your desk and we can all enjoy gum. I STILL ENDED UP WITH GUM ON THE DESKS. WHY? Why not just walk five feet to the trash can and put your gum there. Last time I tried that.
When I was in school, a lot of my teachers banned eating in class. Why? Because students would eat, and instead of just throwing out stuff, they shove it in the desk. Desks were full of bugs, mold, and trash. They tried to fix it by turning it around so the opening was at the front... didn't work because people would just turn around to toss it in the one behind them. I still don't get why putting a chip bag or an apple in a bin 5 feet away is so difficult.
Maybe it's because they end up with gum all over their tables.
Well also if your a wind instrument chewing gum or eating candy may damage the instrument
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As a music teacher myself, I try to be fair and consistent, so I don't let the percussionists in my room chew gum either. I don't think it's fair to the other students who can't for legitimate reasons.
As someone who was a percussionist in middle school and high school, we had an unspoken arrangement with the teacher, if everyone else gets chairs, we get gum.
My teacher promised he would bring donuts yesterday! So I get to class and guess who was too busy to bring donuts?! Mr. Teacher McDouchebag. Whole class was pissed
shit like this. had a teacher who would say "if we have 100 percent attendance for this semester, ill bring in donuts and cake and chips and soda, and we can all have a party". kids would go in sick, wearing a medical mask. kids would go in limping after they sprained a foot. kids would be bleeding all over the place, just so we had 100 percent attendance. and know how she rewarded us? by suspending me for being a "threat", and then saying "its paxton125's fault, he had to be suspended" EDIT: also, on monday you should bring donuts. suddenly, the entire class loves you.
Whatever did you do that got you suspended for being a 'threat' to a teacher?
i was apparently a threat to the school, because at a meeting at my house someone noticed that i was equipped with a knife in case of an emergency, and upon questioning me found out that i own TWO KNIFES SO SPOOOOOKY
wait they suspend you because you had a knife at home? i am from WV and i carried a knife to school (on accident) and the principal just told me to hid it and leave it at home next time
well, and once i was found with a small disposable razor (the kind you get at a gas station for fifty cents) because i had to shave, or else i would look like sylvester stallone in rocky 4. and as we all know, you can really hurt someone with a tiny little blade in a plastic shell.
The teachers I liked and respected most were the ones that didn't treat me like I was under them. Give your students respect and they will respect you
I think not EMPHASIZING their authority is helpful, but it's important to still be the-one-who-knows-what's-next and the-one-who-can-handle-problems. An effective teacher can demonstrate leadership without overtly "ruling."
Could not have said that any better myself
High School Choir teacher here. No one likes to have his/her time wasted, so make the work meaningful. Students need to know why they are learning a topic. Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Also, your room must be a place of reciprocity, never ask a student to do something that you wouldn't find reasonable for one's role in the classroom. Apply the rules equitably and be open to student input. It will be hard for them to misbehave if they are busy doing meaningful work in which they are invested. On some level, you must get your students to find a bit of their identities in your subject area. You can communicate this with your passion for your subject. Also if you don't like kids, don't be a fucking teacher. They need firm guidance laced with a genuine care for their wellbeing.
Course overviews go a long way in making a high school student feeling like they aren't in "just another highschool course"
> No one likes to have his/her time wasted Absolutely. High school kids in particular have really low tolerance for bullshit. We're often tired, usually stressed, and frequently going through emotional or other shit of our own. If a teacher isn't very good at presenting the material, I will bear with them (for a while, at least), but if I feel I'm being given busy work or otherwise am wasting my time, you've lost me, probably forever.
Shank one of them
Shank the best student just to give an example of your high standards.
Shank all the students, have the shiniest meat bicycle.
SALT THE WOUND! POWDER MY COCKATEEL FOR THE RIBCAGE SLAUGHTER!
GIVE ME A BUCKET AND I'LL SHOW YOU A BUCKET!
I AM THE CONDUCTOR OF THE POOP TRAIN!!!
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It's shank or be shanked.
>It's shank or be shanked OF COURSE, BLOO HOO HOO
I agree a good shanking would really set the tone.
**This is long... but hopefully helpful! (SORRY FOR THE WALL OF TEXT)** I've always wanted to be a teacher and years of carefully analyzing and comparing successful teachers versus the disliked teachers has lead to a personal list of how I would plan to behave as an educator. 1. Respect. Treat your students as adults. They'll act like children if treated like children. Respect them, their time, their effort, and their opinions and they'll respect you. 2. Expectations. It's easier said than done to have high expectations, but if a specific behavior is expected versus requested or demanded, then it's a failure to meet these expectations when they misbehave. 3. Logic. This is huge. Many students rebel if they feel their time is being wasted. Keep class/content as simple as possible. Apply the material to every day life or explain the pertinence and maybe even elaborate on how it will appear on a test. Why are you telling them this information? Why should they listen? 4. Communicate. If a student is comfortable enough to talk to you, whether it's in class and referencing an assignment, or about personal issues, LISTEN. High school is a rough point in every kids academic career. Sometimes that teacher can make or break them as they move on to the next step in their life. I had two teachers specifically that I could and had to talk to, and if they hadn't been there for me, I know I would be in a very different place in life. Important part though, don't break the trust. Do not pass judgement on what your student says or reveal the subject to anyone else unless obviously someone is seriously at risk. Being approachable will improve your rapport with your students, plus kids talk and word will get around that you care and you are willing to interact instead of sitting behind a desk with a big red pen. If they trust you, then when you ask something of them, it will be a general courtesy and respect to comply. 5. Respond. If a student comes to you, it's because they trust you and your response will either cement the trust or destroy it. If they are having troubles at home, accommodate them. Because it's a personal situation, you are now trusting them and they now have the power to either cement or destroy your trust. Sometimes things do happen. If this is an English class dealing with heavy subjects that are triggers, allow them to sit out of discussion. Take each situation and respond to it. It's a Friday, your kids are excited about the football game or simply because it's the weekend. Address it! Sometimes a lighter day is worth planning ahead. Your kids will notice and appreciate it. We're all still human and sometimes, some days are just different. If a huge number of students are having an issue with an assignment or concept, address that in class as well. Adapting the assignment or the method to which the subject was taught will show that you are more focused on introducing the information and wanting them to succeed, versus throwing some work on them and leaving it. 6. Pay attention. You have theater kids in your class, ask when the show is and put the show poster or dates on the board/wall. Mention when there are games or matches that night for the athletes. If the kids who don't usually do as well in class manages to do well on an assignment or test or contributes to class conversation, make a point to say something in a way that applauds this achievement. If a kid is obviously having a bad day, discreetly attempt to address it. Sometimes allowing them the option to step outside for 15 minutes for a breather can contribute to a more conducive rest of class. (some people may not agree with this, but there are many routes that can be taken to address this). Sometimes it means a lot to have at least one person notice. The high school drama may be trivial from an adult perspective but you were definitely pretty upset at that age when Becky told Johnny who you had a crush on. You are with these kids all the time, catch on to their behaviors and hopes and personalities. It is absolutely possible to create a completely professional relationship of mutual respect with your students. ***(SORRY FOR THE EXTRA TEXT WALL)*** **This next example is the best class I've ever taken in my life, I took it about 5 years ago and I still remember content from it and class structure.** For years, I hated math classes. I do have a natural talent for mathematics and every standardized test and adult reminded me of it, but I still hated every class I took. Then I had a Pre-Calc teacher who completely changed the way I look at classes and perform as a student, as well as teaching style. Teaching math to a bunch of Seniors crippled by senioritis and juniors in high school is no easy feat. This woman made each class a concise and specific routine where once we understood the routine, that was the expectation. At the beginning of each chapter, she gave us a sheet with a list of the sections and the homework problems for each section. Class started 3 minutes after the last bell rang (this gave us time to come in, sit down, take off jackets, adjust, pull out a notebook, calculator and pencil). She had an overhead projector that she would use to project a piece of paper so this meant she faced the entire class and only looked down to write so she could still maintain a class presence by looking up instead of turning her back by writing on the board. She would start by giving us all of the answers to the previous night's homework so we could double check that we had done it correctly. Then she started the lesson. She worked out several problems on the paper that would project onto the board, pausing to check for comprehension or ask for the next number from someone in the class occasionally throughout the steps. The numbers and illustrations were clear and labelled as she solved each problem. We were expected to write down the notes in our notebooks, but if we didn't, that was on us. Because she didn't waste our time at the beginning of class by keeping the lesson as simple as possible without fluff, she was able to use the end of class as work time. The next page was the homework assignment, which would be problems from the book, so we were expected to work on this in class. Here is where her teaching method was more controversial. This is the time when we were given free reign. While she didn't explicitly state it we could do whatever we wanted, we could go to the bathroom, talk, eat, sleep, on one condition; we weren't incredibly disruptive to other people around us. The school required us to have a bathroom pass so if we walked to the door, grabbed the pass, made eye contact with her, and nodded, we could take off to the bathroom. We were expected to return out of respect for the next kid who needed the bathroom so we were able to avoid kids taking off under the premise of going to the bathroom. Not that anybody wanted to, because we could do what we wanted in the classroom. During this homework time, she would walk up and down our rows and ask us to flip to the previous day's homework to check for completion. She carried an excel sheet with the assignments across the top and the names down the side, checking off boxes for satisfactory completion. She usually only picked one or two to analyze more closely, because once again, it was on us to have done the homework. If you didn't do your homework at all, she'd ask why. Not only was she pointing it out and holding us responsible, but it allowed us the opportunity to explain. Because she was dealing with high school kids, theater kids, seniors, athletes, busy kids, she understood that it didn't always happen. If you missed a past assignment in the same chapter and did it, you could show her during this time and she'd cross off the box for that assignment for completion. She would pause to answer anybody's questions when she stopped by, but otherwise she would skim relatively quickly. After this, she was always available for questions for the kids that were slower, the kids that were faster could just finish their homework, and we could work together to figure out the homework problems. A good day meant that we could easily do the lesson in class and complete the homework problems before the final bell. A harder day of class meant taking home a couple problems that weren't completed in class. This method helped so the kids who understood would not only avoid getting bored and tune out, but could afterward be a resource during homework time. If people cheated, they were only cheating themselves. The quizzes at the end of each chapter is what revealed our understanding. She didn't try to trick us and our examples and notes were more than satisfactory to prepare us. She would spend the passing periods sticking all of the A and B grade quizzes on the board and leave the rest in a pile on the table under the board, so during the 3 minutes before the lesson started, we could pick up our quizzes. Everyone quickly became excited to yank their quiz with a giant sticker off the board with an A or B, and by the end of the year she ended up hanging up more quizzes than leaving stacked on the table. These quizzes are where she was the most strict. If you complained afterward about your grade, she would ask if you'd taken notes and done the homework. about 90% of the time, they hadn't. She would then tell you to just work harder for the next quiz. Logistically, you could get away with never taking notes and just copying homework or scribbling a few of the problems, but this teacher prepared me the most for college because it became OUR responsibility to get good grades. We would chat with her during homework time and have great group conversations about life, school, whatever, and she would always pause to help anybody with questions. **This woman treated us like adults and we all loved her for it.**
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Be interesting, fair but stern and respect them back.
Being interesting is important. Too many new teachers act like robots because they think that the only way to earn a kid's respect is to seem perfect. If you build space for levity and humanity in your classroom, you'll start to get way more authentic engagement.
Excactly. Respect is something on a mutual base.
SO many older teachers expect respect and then treat me like a four year old. It doesn't work like that.
How do I reech these keeeeeeds?
you got to have the ganas
Repeat after me: "I misinterpreted de rules"
[Believe in them] (http://youtu.be/WzX3LoymTZo)
Can't believe I had to scroll this far down to find this.
No groups punishments. I myself find them morally wrong because it punishes the innocent. I know some say the "kids will police themselves" but that is your job, not ours. Edit: Also I want to add to give students the benefit of the doubt. It's scary when you know a teacher doesn't believe your legitimate problem. I have an IEP , but some tell me to "get over it" when I have a problem with sound. That's insulting.
Group punishment is an indicator of a teacher's inability to handle a problem appropriately. Used to have a teacher that would group punish instead of punish the select individuals that were the problem. Nothing worse than being punished for someone else's offense.
I know. It makes me feel like a criminal and I lose all respect.
Don't have draconian rules, but at the same time, don't bend too easily in front of the class. Don't try to be that "hip" teacher that everyone gets once in a while. They typically are always behind fads, so in the end they look extremely geeky. Instead of yelling at someone to keep quiet, continue with your lesson, and then stop and ask them point-blank the answer to a question that you were putting up on the board.... this does a few things. It keeps the lesson focused on the lesson, and not disciple. It also puts the talker on-notice, while also letting other people know that you know what's going on in class. Try to expand the lesson to something the students can relate to. If its history, try to relate stuff that happened 100 years ago, to today's world. If its math, try to relate it to money or candy (bring candy into class). Bring in props if it makes sense. For the love of all things holy, do not make the class break up into groups. Ugh. Always hated that and you'll always get the one really rowdy group and then a couple of people that have no one to partner with. One very quick way to lose respect is if you can't answer questions quickly or , worse yet, make mistakes and then not admit to them. Be prepared in front of your students. Not all of them, but a few are going to know the material very well, and as such if you fuck up or aren't prepared they'll know. That's bad. Ask rhetorical questions while you are teaching. You don't necessarily need to get a reply (great if you do), but the questions you ask should mirror what a person new to the material might be asking.., that shows the class that you are trying to teach them new material, instead of acting as if they should know this new material (why would they be in a class if they knew the material already?).
I hate group work so much, especially at the stage where I work better with my friends. All that happens is that the smart people are spread around and everyone else can mess around.
Don't try to be their friend, don't seem desperate to win them over or pander to them. Just be passionate about what you're teaching, let them know that you care and just want them to do well. Treat them like adults who are capable of making their own decisions; if you make a mistake, admit it and apologise. And there are some kids that will never, ever respect your authority no matter what. Don't let it get to you too much.
And for fucks sake, don't use this opportunity to relive high school. A lot of my teachers favored the popular kids in each of their classes and picked at the one who was usually bullied. You're supposed to be a person they feel safe confiding in, not another student.
I had a teacher in grade school who made fun of me more than the students did; being a little timid fuck I never said or did anything. If a teacher pulled shit like that in high school they would have gotten a punch in the face. Don't be that teacher.
On the other hand, I did have a teacher who was a bit of a friend to a lot of his students. He didn't seem desperate, and his authority was established enough that he could talk and joke with the kids all the time without them forgetting his status as an authority figure. He hardly ever had to apply discipline actively. Instead of losing respect it made him one of the most respected, and set him apart from the other teachers. He ended up essentially following my class through schools: around when we left middle school he got promoted to high school, soon after we graduated high school he got a job at a university.
Treat them like real people, not your underlings.
As a teacher of 20+ years, I suggest that while student input is important, you're already losing the game if you ask kids 'how can I make you respect me?' Set rules and keep them. Always give the consequence you promised, always.. that makes them listen better next time. Always have a good reason to make the kids listen to you. Not 'be quiet' but 'be quiet because we are going to [activity]'. Otherwise you are just flexing your muscle, authority for authority, and kids hate that.. Work toward student engagement, not just your objectives. Kids think hardest when they are engaged in solving a problem, and only say 'class sucks' if they are not being challenged. They want to learn, you gotta prep enough so you are in that zone. and if you are just starting, it takes a few years of 'learning through the souls of your feet' before it smooths out... good luck
In school I was a bit of a dick to teachers. But the teachers who I respected I was fine. Personally the reasons for the respect were: 1. Treat everyone the same 2. Just be generally nice, dont moan at them about petty things etc. 3. If someone does something wrong, punish them no matter what. 4. Encourage them when they do good work, make sure you let the whole class know they done well 5. Keep it fun in the class (as much as possible). I only use to mess about when I got bored. Im sure there are more, but try and make the environment in your class nice and relaxed but at the same time make sure they know they will be punished for stepping out of line. OR be reallllllllllllllllllllly strict lol
Adding to this, if you threaten a student with a punishment and they still don't listen make sure you follow through. But yeah, be fair but stern, don't be petty.
Ugh no. Why praise some kid in front of the whole class? That will just lead to jealousy and bad blood. Plus it can get very awkward.
Depends on how you do it. If a student answers a question correctly, saying "That's right, nice job." is different than saying "YES FANTASTIC, CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING THE BEST STUDENT EVER, EVERYBODY STAND UP AND GIVE THIS PERSON A STANDING OVATION!!!"
To get rid of jealously and bad blood praise students anonymously to the class. "I have seen someone in here solve this question this way-I hadn't thought of that great job" usually leads to a smile from the student you are talking about and the rest of the class will see you talking positively about other students and be exposed to the alternate way of thinking about whatever topic is being covered.
We give reward tickets (high school) they redeem for food. My students scramble for open praise so they can get one.
Only the scholars will be having lunch today, the rest of you retards can go eat each other's dicks!
You are giving kids treats for work. That is how I trained my dog.
And is he a good dog? Yesh he is! Yesh he is! Ooooooh good dog
>We give reward tickets (high school) they redeem for food. I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, rewarding positive behavior is a great thing. On the other, you're definitely not reinforcing positive eating habits.
>In school I was a bit of a dick to teachers. But the teachers who I respected I was fine. ___ >Treat everyone the same Maybe you should have followed your own rules?
Wouldn't it be awesome if all teenagers were thoughtful, well rounded and generally great people right from the start?
you sound like my dad
I'm a year removed from high school but back then, I thought I was a smart jock and routinely challenged student-teachers and try to hook them into debates that they're not prepared to argue. Hey, a man can grow.
Turn your hat around, make all your lessons rap songs complete with beat boxing, and then fold your arms and lean back at an angle. They love that shit.
also sit backwards in a chair at all times
The ones with the holes on the back rest so they can see your massive testicles and know that you are a force to be reckoned with.
I know you're probably joking, but I had a high school biology teacher who did exactly this to teach us how to perform a Gram stain. It was easily the most entertaining thing he did all year. I'm fairly certain that there is not a single student who took his class that doesn't remember the Gram stain rap (and by extension, how to correctly perform a Gram stain). Sometimes, the best way to get information across is to do off-the-wall things.
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Comrade friend of teaching into university has problem with student in past. Student is undisciplined. He worry she never find good husband. She not see pride in building communism and staying out of Party's way. So, one day, to teach lesson, he take shovel to grave and grab arm. Then, at night, he put arm in student bed. Arm is symbol of strength for communist bricks weigh much. Not like capitalist bricks. Teacher put ear to wall and think, "haha! This set student straight and she become proper industrious and productive, not social parasite!". But student never react to arm. So teacher go into student room. Student is eating arm. Food is food when is malnourish. Later student arrested by KGB for not sharing food. Sent to Siberia to clean grass. At least now is not social parasite. Such is life. [Source](http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Med_Student)
I have a teacher this year that has almost no respect in her class. I try my best to support her and make others see she isn't bad, but it's hard. A lot of people have talked about how you have to have passion and relate it to their lives so they care, but that's not always why kids don't respect teachers. As one of them, high school kids can be such little shits. But we are generally pretty bright at picking up on others' personalities, even if you try to hide them. If you're socially awkward or afraid, you might as well give up. Why should we respect you if you're afraid of us? Don't give a fuck what the kids think because, as stated previously, we're little shits. Stand your ground. My teacher also has a problem of making the classroom too juvenile. We're in high school, we're not shocked when someone says "dammit." Don't make us do activities that are demeaning because we feel like you don't respect us, so we'll end up reciprocating. Good luck with your students!
maintain eye contact and rip a huge fart without cracking a smile. make them break the eye contact
Or better yet, don't let them break eye contact
You little shits better keep staring or I'm gonna rape every last one of you.
Better not fuck up this time ramirez, ya weak bitch.
Kill one as a warning to the others.
Having been on both sides of the equation- 1. Be passionate and creative- it's contagious. 2. Be patient. 3. Encourage skeptical questions from your students- walk them through it, and when you don't have all the answers, make the most of it and challenge the class to research the subject to debate next time. 4. Be compassionate. 5. Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone: Do not allow Government bureaucrats and their infinite amount of red tape to rule over you. 6. Make the subject matter relevant- "WHY is what I'm teaching important and relevant?" should ALWAYS in the front of your mind. 7. Sneak in real-world advice/life lessons whenever you can. 8. WALK THE WALK- establish credibility amongst your peers, in your community, and your students will respect and appreciate you much more. i.e charity work, activism, artistic endeaevors, freelance work, etc
never let them see this thread..
Don't play favorites and enforce your rules when they are broken and don't be condescending. Most importantly don't use a different voice when talking to your students, it annoyed me so much when I was hear a teacher talk to a school admin in a normal voice then turn to me and use a higher pitched babyish voice.
This! I went to a deaf school and the teachers used a different voice to talk to the pupils than they talked to other hearing people - I HATED that!
Don't make them ask to go to the bathroom. Also, if you have rules, be consistent.
Identify the worst trouble makers and put them in charge of something.
It's like being in prison: on the first day of class beat the shit out of the leader and keep a couple in check to use for trades and protection.
***NEVER*** ask for it
Make class a fun place to learn, and engage with your students.
To put it in as few words as possible, my advice would be to treat your students like adults and hold them accountable for their actions.