S is for Student

I suppose this is the most obvious choice for the letter "S," but I might just take this some place unexpected. Sure, our primary focus as a teacher is on the learners with whom we work. We not only strive to teach them things they don't know, but we do our best to earn their trust and make them comfortable as they pass through our classroom doors.

I challenge you, however, to see yourself as the student...the student of the students. We have assumed the role of teacher because we schooled for years, earned certification, and then accepted teaching assignments. I maintain it isn't until we accept a role reversal that we can be most effective at our jobs.

What are these young people teaching you daily at your job? Do you remain open and sensitive to their needs, their humor, their challenging of limits? Are you skilled at putting yourself in their place? If the student is fully virtual, he is sitting at home, often alone, facing a computer and working to learn. At the same time, friends are texting and emailing, music or the television are playing, and snacks and drinks are calling his name. Doesn't this sound a bit like a description of your work place and how easy is it for you? Are you able to fully discipline yourself to sit for hours accomplishing what is needed, able to ignore more appealing distractions? If you are doing graduate work yourself, what do your study times and submissions look like in light of other things you want or need to do?

It is all a study in human nature. We subconsciously prioritize things in the order in which we enjoy doing them, not always in the order in which they are due. That can get anyone in trouble at any age, but especially a less-disciplined learner.

How can you be that one positive distraction they just can't refuse, the one place they so want to be that they will ignore television shows and YouTube videos, phone calls and sleeping late? We can't "make" students do anything, but we can entice them to make better choices. Study your students, be your students, and meet them in their world in order to best connect them to you, your classes, and your content. And absolutely vital to forming relationships with students at all levels is the ability to laugh, not at them but with them. Many students have been reconnected to learning when a teacher uses humor to move a situation forward.

Reflection: Study your students' behavior to determine how best to serve them as teachers. Don't generalize or base assumptions on pop culture ("all young people are lazy" or "college kids just want to party"). Assess the time of day, the season, the heaviness of the expectations (graduation imminent?), their individual likes and dislikes, their family and extracurriculars, and everything else you can glean from initial introductions. How will you bring it all together to spell success for each learner?