Twenty Ways to Help Students Learn to Be Accountable

                 

 

 

                   If you are like most educators at this time of the year, you are probably more than ready for your students to assume more responsibility for their own success. To be more self-disciplined. To learn to hold themselves accountable for their work and behavior. Unfortunately, our students do not learn accountability quickly or with a few easy strategies or even very predictably. Instead helping students learn to be accountable is an ongoing process that involves consistent effort on our parts. Hang in there. The end result is well worth the effort. Here are twenty things to consider as you move your students forward.

 

           1.        Involve parents or guardians as often as it takes for you to create an effective team of caring adults who want to help a child succeed.

                  2.        Teach your students how to do their work. Students should be taught the study skills they need to reach the standards you have for them.

                  3.        Call on every student every day. Allow no student to be invisible in your classroom.

                  4.        Return graded papers promptly so that students know what they should do to improve.

                  5.        Make sure your comments on assignments are geared to helping students correct their errors and improve their performance.

                  6.        Foster responsibility through the daily routines and procedures you establish for your students. Involve them in routine classroom-management tasks.

                  7.        Teach your students to pace themselves by paying attention to the time it takes for them to complete various types of assignments. Teach them how to estimate the amount of time it will take to complete assignments and how to time themselves.

                  8.        Keep your interactions with individual students brief enough so that your attention can stay focused on the rest of the class as well. Don’t allow your time to be monopolized by one attention-seeking student at the expense of the others in the class.

                  9.        Make sure your students know that you pay attention to them. Students who know their teacher is paying attention to their behavior are not going to misbehave as readily as those students who believe they can get away with bad behavior.

                10.      Hold your students to the same behavior standards for substitute teachers that you expect when you are in the room. Discuss this with them in advance of the time when you will be absent; you will find that your students behave much better than if you adopt a “kids will be kids” attitude.

                11.      Refuse to allow your students to sleep or to do homework for other classes in your class. They should be doing your work in your class.

                12.      Make it a point that you expect 100% accuracy in student work. Some students will aim to just get by with a minimum of work unless you encourage them to do otherwise.

                13.      Have students edit or double-check each other’s work before turning it in. Peer editing works best if you provide students with a checklist of standards to follow while proofreading.

                14.      Instead of having all of your students shout out answers in an oral activity, ask them to write their responses first and then answer when you call on them. This will force everyone to think before responding.

                15.      Plan the procedures you want your students to follow in case they don’t have their materials or textbooks in class. Don’t allow students to get away with not working because they don’t have their materials.

                16.      When you are moving around the room to monitor activity, ask your students to underline the answers they think are correct and circle the ones that puzzle them so that you can work together to make sure they understand how to do all of their work well.

                17.      If you find that some of your students are reluctant to accomplish their work on schedule, contact their parents or guardians. If students know that their progress is being monitored at home as well as in class, they usually perform better.

                18.      If you see that students have trouble grasping an assignment, reteach the material. Don’t allow students to rest on their ignorance.

                19.      When students miss the answer to a question, ask them to write the correct answer on their papers. Students should be held accountable for correcting their papers.

                20.      Make neatness an important component of the work in your classroom. You don’t have to be a perfectionist, but you should expect your students to turn in neat work.

Strategies for Managing Overcrowded Classes

My classes are overcrowded. Just like thousands of other educators, I teach in a school district struggling with tough choices when it comes to budget matters. The result? There are lots of student names on my rosters...lots and lots of names.

Too many students packed into a room designed for a much smaller class presents some serious challenges. Like other teachers, I struggle with managing the paperwork load. I work hard to figure out ways to return graded papers with meaningful comments in a timely fashion. I work hard to figure out ways to manage the traffic flow so that my students can work with their classmates and I don't have to leap over book bags in the aisles. I work hard at classroom management so no one gets lost in the crowd. I work hard to make sure that an overcrowded classroom is just a challenge and not a detriment. If you are in the same situation, here are some tips for managing an overcrowded class that I have found useful in my own practice.

An Excerpt from Discipline Survival Guide for the Secondary Teacher

“In the recent past, many teachers have had to cope with classes that were just slightly above the recommended size for the grade and subject. However, today’s widespread and severe budget cuts have made critically overcrowded classrooms that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. As inevitable as overcrowded classes may be, the discipline problems associated with them are not. Overcrowded classes can be managed successfully by those teachers who meet the unique challenges they present.

Even though we know that smaller classes are the preferred option for our students, a positive discipline climate and a pleasant learning environment are possible in overcrowded classes. The following strategies can start you on the way to successfully managing the problems of overcrowded classes.

·  Even if you are not easily intimidated, confronting a large group of students who have been crammed into a classroom designed for a much smaller group can be more than a little discouraging. Unless you immediately assume a strong leadership role, you will be so outnumbered by your students that they will be in charge of the class, not you.

·         The room arrangement is very important in overcrowded classes. Make sure you have enough desks. Move all equipment that you don’t need to use right away to storage and do whatever else you can to further reduce the claustrophobic effects of clutter in the room.

·   Pay careful attention to traffic patterns and student movement. Try to reduce this as much as possible. Teach your students to dispose of trash at the end of class and to sharpen pencils only at the start of class.

·         An overcrowded class requires more monitoring than a smaller one. Teach your students that they are to place their book bags under their desks rather than in the aisle to make movement easier.

·   A seating chart is an absolute must in an overcrowded class if you want to reduce the amount of off-task behavior. A structured environment will reduce the number of problems you will face.

·         Prepare yourself for the noise level. A large class can be a noisy class if you don’t establish some guidelines early in the year with your students to help them control the noise level.

·   Be extremely organized and a model of efficiency for your students who could be tempted to use overcrowding as an excuse not to do their best. Keep your personal space in good order and insist that your students leave their area tidy at the end of class. Encourage them to check to make sure their classmates don’t leave personal belongings behind when class is over.

·  It is important for you to avoid confusion and the discipline problems caused by failure to return papers promptly. Although it takes longer to grade papers for a large class, your students may feel lost in the crowd if you allow papers to pile up before you give them the feedback that all students need in order to stay focused on learning during class.

·    Routines are very important in a large class. Establish and teach them early in the term. Students should be able to predict what they are supposed to do in your class even though there are many students in the room.

·  Allow no horseplay. Even though you may be inclined to allow students some leeway in playing around, this is not a good idea when there are too many students in the room. Horseplay in a crowd is wasted time as well as dangerous. Stop it at the first sign it is about to begin.

·         Be especially careful in a crowded class to prevent the cheating that can happen because students have to sit close together. Provide a cover sheet and monitor carefully to prevent problems.

·  Enlist your students in a sense of togetherness and encourage a spirit of cooperation in solving the problems caused by an overcrowded class. A sense of humor and a positive attitude on your part will set a pleasant tone for your students to model.

·  It is important for you to speak with every student each day. Greeting them at the door is a good beginning to solving the problems of having to keep in touch with many students. Make a point to let your students know that you are aware of them as people, not just as faces in a crowd.

·         Creating permanent teams of study buddies is a good way to give students a sense of togetherness and connectedness in the midst of the larger group. When students have a few partners to turn to for help and support, they will feel like a part of the class instead of being just one of many.

·  Courtesy to each other and to you is especially important in a large class. Teach the importance of courtesy to the students in a large class and insist that they treat everyone with politeness. A large courteous class is much better and easier to deal with than a small rude one.

·  Your attitude is the most important factor in coping successfully with the demands of a large class. It’s not the number of students occupying seats in the room, but the careful planning, interesting lessons, and sincere effort to connect with each student each day that will determine the success or failure of the discipline climate in a class.

HOW TO DEAL WITH A REALLY DIFFICULT CLASS

There are difficult classes and then there are really difficult classes. A difficult class is one where things don't always go as planned. Students may get a little loud. They don't do their homework consistently. Sometimes they are distracted and bored or off task. A difficult class won't cause you to toss and turn all night long. There is usually a reasonable fix--a tweak here or there solution

 

 

On the other hand, the really difficult class is exhausting, time-consuming, and stressful. It's the class where you are so busy trying to contain the chaos that you have difficulty just checking attendance. It's the one that makes you want to explore other careers. It's the one that you mentally replay over and over on the way home from school.  If you have one of these really difficult classes this year, you are not alone.

 

 You are also not without resources. You can deal successfully with this type of class. I should know. I have had enough really difficult classes in the course of my long career to develop some expertise in dealing with them. Here's what works for me:

 

 

• Own the problem. If you accept responsibility for what happens in your class, then you can start making efforts to improve the situation. Blaming students or anyone else only wastes time that could be spent creating productive solutions. Thinking of this as a solvable set of problems can move you forward.

 

• Identify the trouble-causing issues in the class. Is the noise level too loud? Is there a problem with students being off task? Is the start of class the problem? Transitions? The end of class? Not enough materials? No social skills? There is rarely just one reason for a class to be really difficult.

 

• Make it easy for students to behave well. Look hard at the procedures, policies, rules, and expectations that you have for this class. Do your students know exactly what is expected of them? When you are trying to manage a really difficult class, you must explicitly spell out the information that they need to know.

 

• Be ruthlessly consistent. If you say it, enforce it. Think through what you expect from your students, tell them what you want, and then mean what you say.

 

• Be patient. If you work steadily at chipping away at rude or unproductive behaviors, sooner or later things will change. Dealing with a really difficult class will take time.

 

• Attack the problem from as many sides as you can. Involve parents and administrators, reward good behavior, have negative consequences for bad behavior, allow for short attention spans...there is no one single approach that will solve the problems in a really difficult class.

 

• Work on the relationship you have with your students. Smile at your class. If you were videotaped while teaching, would your body language reveal positive or negative feelings about your students?

 

• Keep the expectations for your class high. Students live up to the expectations of the adults in their lives, so let them know that you expect a lot from them.

 

• From the first class meeting onward, establish that you control the class. Demonstrate that you will oversee the behavior in your classroom for the good of all students.

 

• Work on the noise level every day until your students learn to govern themselves. Teach students which volumes are acceptable and which are not. Establish signals to help students learn to control the noise.

• Stay on your feet and monitor. Students who know that you are watching over them will hesitate before misbehaving.

• It seems simplistic, but tell your students that you expect them to do their work well and that you will help them learn to do it. Be clear that you are on their side.

• Offer incentives other than grades. Students who have never received a good grade may not be motivated by grades. Offer small, frequent, rewards instead, such as stickers, computer time, or bookmarks.

• Praise good behavior as often as you can. Difficult students do not always know when they are behaving well. When you praise your class for good behavior, you are encouraging all of your students to repeat the behavior.

• Don’t allow students to argue with you. Be polite, but clear that you are the person responsible for the well-being of all students in the class.

 

• Acknowledge the rights of individuals in your class. Showing students that you are fair will ease many sensitive situations.

• Students who do not believe they can succeed have no reason to try. Teachers who achieve success with difficult classes turn the negative energy in a class into a positive force by persistently communicating their faith in their students’ ability to achieve.

What works for you?

Finding Meaning in What We Do

One of the hallmarks of a dedicated teacher is the almost unshakable belief that teachers can change the world. We want to believe that what we do is meaningful. That what do we does make a difference.

Some days, though, it’s easy to be so caught up in the papers to be graded, the assessments to be created, and the emails to be answered that we can lose sight of the meaningfulness of our work. And lately, the hateful tone of so many pundits who are not classroom teachers, but who are quick to tell us what we are doing wrong, wrong, wrong is discouraging and degrading. The result? Burnout.

Burnout is different from the insistent plea, “But I don’t want to go to school today!” that is the morning mantra for teachers everywhere. Burnout is a pervasive sense that there is not much point to what we do. Certainly, the negative aspects of our work outweigh the positives for teachers who are going through burnout.

One of the surest ways to combat the sense of despair that accompanies burnout is to reconsider what having a meaningful career looks like when you teach. What does it mean when we say we make a difference?

Teachers who stop kids from picking on each other, being rude, and making fun of classmates protect students who are powerless to defend themselves. We stop bullies from winning. We empower kids when we tell them to talk to an adult if they have a problem; and we empower them when we praise them for the right things. We empower them over and over when we use our adult power to stop bullies.

We make a difference when we show kids how to be lifelong learners. We make it okay to be curious. We take them to the library to check out books and show them how to read and write and think and work together. We make it cool to be a nerd in a tough world.

For all teachers, and especially those of us who teach the children of poverty, we find meaning in the way that we try to guide our students to a better life. Few veteran teachers have not known the despair that comes when we realize that even our most (seemingly) ordinary students can struggle with terrible home situations—an ill family member, an alcoholic parent, or a guardian who has been out of work for too long, just to name a few. For these kids, teachers are a touchstone of normalcy in a rotten world. We show our students how having an education can make a life far more comfortable and easy than a life of ignorance.

We offer comfort and guidance to those students whose lives are chaotic and dysfunctional for whatever reason. We can soothe the edges for those kids and guide them to cope, to make good choices, to succeed somewhere. We give them the encouragement that the rest of the world does not.

We show our students how to read, to write, to think, to have a life of the mind. Without us, many students would not possess any of these crucial skills. When we show students how to read and write, we give them safe passage in the big world.

Finally, perhaps the most important gift that we give students is the one that is most frequently reciprocated; we teach students to believe in themselves. Whenever you doubt that teaching is a meaningful profession, consider that you spend your days encouraging young people to take charge of their lives and to make gigantic leaps of faith—all dependent on the belief that we have instilled in them that the future is theirs for the taking.

How to Build Persistence and Confidence

One of the most frustrating situations for any teacher occurs when seemingly capable students won’t finish simple assignments or, even worse, won’t even attempt assignments that appear to be even slightly challenging. Students who stop working at the first moment of perceived difficulty are even more perplexing because their lack of persistence is often confused with laziness. While it may be tempting to just advise students to keep trying, this advice seldom resolves the problem.

There are many reasons for the unwaveringly feeble effort that many students present at the first sign of a challenge. For many students, the fear of their work not being “good enough” is paralyzing. Rather than earn a failing grade from a teacher, they give it to themselves by just not doing the work.

Other students are so accustomed to overly helpful adults who respond to their learned helplessness with so many hints and clues that they do not really have to think for themselves. Unfortunately, this pattern of behavior is all too recognizable. These are the students who ask others for the page number rather than check a table of contents, ask dozens of anxious questions rather than read the text for information, of who put their heads down on their desks rather than work independently for any length of time.

Whatever the reason, it is possible to mitigate the patterns of learned helplessness. Below is a list of strategies that you can use to help your students develop into persistent and confident learners.

1. Start a unit of study by activating prior knowledge. Students who can connect new learning with previous knowledge will be far more likely to persist in facing learning challenges than those students for whom each concept in the material is unfamiliar.

2. Begin a unit of study or even smaller assignments within that unit with work that easier than it will be near the end of the unit or assignment. Once students see that they can do the work, they will be less intimidated.

3. Break longer assignments into smaller, more manageable ones so that students won’t be overwhelmed at the thought of a long task.

4. When students work in pairs or triads on even part of an assignment, they tend to do well. Working with a study buddy allows instant support when students are not sure of an answer or a procedure.

5. Nothing succeeds like success. Design activities where your students can shine, and they will want to continue the positive feelings generated by that success. Use differentiation techniques to reach as many learners as you can.

6. Help students see the connection between effort and success. Often less persistent students believe that good students somehow are just smarter or find the work easier than they do. Learning that everyone needs to work hard at times can be an epiphany for some students.

7. Teach students how to accurately estimate the time that it may take them to complete a task. Students who think that it will take them hours and hours to do their homework will be far more prone to quit than those students who realize that a shorter time commitment is required.

8. Offer plenty of rubrics, models, samples, and demonstrations so that students know when they are on the right track.

9. Have students set reasonable goals and work to achieve them. When students work to achieve a personal goal, they have a vested interest in working.

10. When you see students struggling with an assignment, use one of the most powerful questions in your teacher’s toolbox: ask, “How can I help you?”

11. All learning should have a clear and pragmatic purpose. Students who know why they have to complete an assignment will be more willing to do so if they know how it will benefit them now and in the future.

12. Have students write their questions during independent work in a certain area of the board or on the Smartboard. Answer these questions at predictable intervals.

13. Formative assessments serve a dual purpose. They not only let you know what your students do and do not know, but they can be useful tools in making sure that your students know exactly how to proceed to be successful. Frequent small formative assessments can be very useful tools in helping students stay on track.

14. Teach your students that their work does not always have to be perfect to be acceptable. Sometimes “good enough” is really good enough.

15. Harness the power of peer pressure. Having students work together in a class challenge to reach a specific goal can encourage those students who are willing to shortchange themselves, but who don’t want to let their classmates down.

16. Many teachers find that stopping periodically and having peers make brief checks of each others’ work can help students stay on the right track.

17. School success is not a big, flashy event. Rather, academic success lies in a pattern of small accomplishments. Work with your students to help them internalize this idea though brief class discussions, reflections, and other shared conversations.

18. Some students benefit from seeing a visual representation of the sequence of assignments that they are required to do. A bar graph or chart with spaces to be filled in as students complete the various steps of a unit of study will make it easier for students to persist until they complete the big task.

19. Frequent praise and even more frequent encouragement will keep students on task far longer than brusque corrections will.

20. Careful and close monitoring of students as they work will allow you to catch problems when they are manageable. Small problems are not roadblocks to confidence building—big problems are, though.

21. Encourage students who are working independently to signal that they are having a problem and then to keep working until help arrives. Some teachers offer a desk sign that is red on one side to signal for help and green on another to signal that they are on the right track.

22. Some teachers do not answer oral questions when students are working independently except at set intervals. Used correctly, this technique encourages students to keep working because they know that their questions will be answered at a predictable time.

23. Offer students time to reflect at the end of a lesson. Have them write responses first and then encourage them to share what went right and what caused stress during an assignment. Sharing the results of their metacognition can be a powerful way for students to learn how other students overcome their learning problems.

24. Often older students who have mastered the material current students may find difficult can be helpful resources. They can offer quick, informal advice and encouragement from a student’s point of view.

25. Providing opportunities for students to look back on how far they have come in their learning--to review their past success—allows students to see the big picture of what they have already accomplished and encourages them to continue.

26. Be sure to offer a sufficient amount of appropriate practice before moving on to the next topic of study.

27. Offer a variety of different activities to review material. At the end of each class, when you provide a quick review of the day’s lesson, use a variety of different activities that appeal to the various learning styles among your students.

28. Work with your students to focus on their strengths. Once they know what they are doing right, what individual study techniques work well for them, then students will be able to use those techniques and strengths to work quickly and efficiently.

The Self-fulfilling Prophecy and Your Students: "I Knew You Could Do It!"

Although most teachers are aware of their responsibility to serve as role models, counselors, and advocates, we tend to underestimate the effect that we can have on our students. The reasons for this lie in the daily struggles that happen in classrooms everywhere. We work in a formidable flux of constant decisions, difficult demands, and hard-to-manage problems. With all of these facing us as soon as the bell rings, it's not always easy to remember that your attitude about your students can really change everything.

You have enormous power over the lives of your students. In fact, you can make the children in your classroom into successful students or you can make those same children into failures. Your beliefs about your students create this power in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The self-fulfilling prophecy begins with the expectations you have about your students. These expectations are your unconscious as well as your conscious attitudes about your students’ ability to succeed. You constantly communicate those expectations to your students in many subtle ways such as though your body language, the assignments you make, the language you use, and how much time you spend with individual students.

Because humans tend to behave as they are treated, your students will react to the way that you communicate those expectations to them. If you think highly of your students, they will tend to behave better for you than for the teachers who obviously do not enjoy being with them. If you act with a calm assurance that conveys your belief that the students in your class are capable of good behavior and academic accomplishments then your students are highly likely to behave well and strive for success.

If you doubt this power, consider the alternative. Why would students struggle to learn, to behave, to come to school without a caring adult who appears glad to see them succeed? For some students, a teacher is their only lifeline.

How can you use your expectations to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that can create a classroom climate for success? Every day, you can pass along transmit your belief in the abilities of your students in a variety of ways.

• Start with assignments that your students can achieve with ease. Success builds upon itself. When students see that they can accomplish what you ask of them, they will want to continue that success.
• Celebrate often with your students. After all, their successes are your successes.You do not have to dedicate lots of time to formal celebrations. A simple posting or display of good news, a class signal that allows classmates to acknowledge each other in positive way, or a quiet word with individual students will all establish a positive tone.
• Be as consistent and as fair as you possibly can. Students of all ages are quick to react negatively when they detect even a small hint of suspected unfairness. They will shut down quickly when this happens.
• Post motivational signs, mottoes, and other messages to encourage students to give their best effort.
• Reward effort as well as achievement. It is important to make sure your students see the link between success and effort.
• Create an risk-free environment in which students can risk trying new things without fear of failure or ridicule.
• Tell your students about your confidence in their ability to succeed. Tell them this over and over.
•  Teach your students how to set measurable goals and how to achieve them. Model this for students.  Set goals as a class and have students set small daily or weekly goals until it is a habit and part of the culture of your classroom.
• At the end of class ask students to share what they have learned. Often, they are not aware of how much they have really actually achieved until they have the opportunity to reflect.
• We all know that open-ended questions and assignments can serve as sparks to deepen critical thinking skills. They can also serve to motivate students to work hard because of their intrinsic interest and risk-free nature. Open-ended questions and assignments are a respectful way to demonstrate your faith in your students' ability to tackle tough work.
• Teach your students how to handle the failures that everyone experiences from time to time. Help them understand that they can learn from their mistakes as well as from their successes.
• Formative assessments can be helpful tools for those teachers who want to empower their students to believe in themselves. Use a variety of assessments to help students evaluate their progress and determine what they need to accomplish to finish assignments.

  

How Well Do You Motivate Your Students?

Here is a quick quiz to test your knowledge of motivational strategies. Since we all need to be sure to include motivational activities into every lesson, it is imperative that we do this as effectively as possible.

Test your knowledge! The answers to this True or False quiz are given at the bottom. And, as always, feel free to leave a comment or suggestion.


1. It’s never too late to attempt to motivate even the most reluctant learners.

2. Students should have plenty of options, even on tests.

3. Grades serve as an important motivational tool for most students.

4. Using a classroom economy of tokens has proved to be a successful motivational tool for many educators.

5. Assignments that involve competition are more effective motivators for male students than assignments that require cooperation or collaboration.

6. It is better to say, “How can I help you?” instead of “You should…” when attempting to motivate students.

7. Using class time to read or do homework is an effective way to motivate students.

8. When students ask for answers to problems or questions during independent practice work, it is okay to give them the correct response.

9. Dealing with student anxiety about how to correctly complete their assignments is one of the most important considerations when attempting to successfully motivate students.

10. Negative comments can often influence motivation in a positive way.

11. Showing models of work done well by their peers can be a powerful motivator for many students.

12. Instructional expectations should become more difficult as the year progresses.

13. Rewarding their effort builds student self-esteem.

14. Calling or emailing a student’s home with positive comments is a good way to get students to do their work.

15. Students tend to perform better with a predictable routine.

16. Many students like to learn just for the pleasure of learning.

17. If their teacher is bored with a subject, then students are likely to be bored also.

18. Extrinsic rewards work well for almost every student.

19. Using food treats as rewards is now regarded with disfavor in many school districts.

20. Younger children are easier to motivate to succeed in school than older ones.

21. A positive relationship with their peers can be a powerful motivational force for many students regardless of their age.

22. It is possible to create a negative environment by praising students too highly.

23. A risk-free classroom is almost impossible to achieve in high school and the middle grades.

24. Girls are easier to motivate than boys.

25. The best way to motivate and challenge students is through a careful combination of a variety of motivational tools.


These statements are all TRUE.

1 It really is never too late to try to make a difference in the life of a student entrusted to your care. If you don’t make the effort, who will?

4 Using tokens in the classroom has proved very successful for some teachers. The best practice would be to use a token economy as a stepping stone into more intrinsic motivation techniques.

6 The difference in tone is the key. One is friendly and helpful. The other is judgmental.

7 While some students enjoy time in class reading or catching up on homework, that time could be better used in more focused instructional activities.

9 Often students will do their work and then not turn it in. Still others will agonize over each problem in an assignment. Make sure students know how to do their work and about how long each activity should take to help reduce anxiety.

11 Models, demonstrations, and examples are all effective ways to make students confident about how to do their work well.

12 Since small successes lead to bigger successes, it only makes sense to make work easier for students to do well at the start of a school term. You can then raise the level of expectation as the year progresses and your students develop and learn new skills.

14 Once students and their families see that it is possible for them to succeed, then they will tend to want to continue to experience that success. It is always a good idea to have the parents and guardians of your students working along with you.

15 Students who know what to do and how to do it well are much more likely to succeed than those who attempt to learn in a chaotic classroom.

17 A caring and enthusiastic teacher is the key to a successful classroom. If you don’t like a topic, you can be sure that your students won’t like it either.

19 With the high levels of childhood obesity, it only makes sense to use other rewards than food to motivate your students.

21 Students who feel that they are a valued part of a group will want to live up to the group’s expectations for success. Try to connect your students to the positive aspects of your class’s culture as often as you can.

22 When students are lavishly praised for things that they should have done well as a matter of routine, their achievement level drops significantly. The impact of sincere praise is immeasurable.

25 There is no magic bullet. A technique that works well for one student may not be effective for others. Good teachers constantly use a wide range of motivational strategies to reach out to every student.

How to Show Your Students that You Care About Them

How important is it to connect with your students in a positive way? Crucial. A productive teacher-student relationship can make a class run smoothly. Without it, nothing will. Students of all ages need to feel that their teachers like them and approve of what they do. Fortunately for teachers everywhere, there are many, many ways to show that you care about your students while still maintaining a professional attitude.

Here are a few quick suggestions for those teachers who want to project a postive, productive attitude while working with students. Please feel free to add your comments! We all learn from each other.

• While you don’t want to be a pushover, try to find common ground as often as you can. The simple act of agreeing with your students as often as you can sets a pleasant and cooperative tone.

• Set responsible behavior limits for everyone, and be fair when you enforce these limits.

• Use a kind voice when you speak with your students.

• Listen to all of your students. Encourage them to share ideas and opinions.

• If one of your students is in the newspaper for something positive, clip out the article and display it.

• Stress the things that you and your students have in common: goals, dreams, and beliefs.

• When a student speaks to you, stop and listen.

• Respond to emails from your students promptly and courteously.

• When you display student work, don’t just display the best. Display everyone’s work.

• Have students create study buddy groups so that they can be connected to other students and to you. Students who feel as if they are part of a class tend to want to remain in school longer than those students who feel isolated.

• Maintain a birthday calendar for your students. Celebrate birthdays with birthday messages on the board.

• Attend school events. If your students play a sport or perform in a concert, go and watch them to show your appreciation for their hard work.

• Use good manners when you deal with your students and insist that they do the same.

• When students confide in you, follow up. For example, if students have told you that they were worried about a test in another class, take the time to ask about how they did.

• Make it very clear to your students that you want to help them achieve their dreams.

• Ask about a student’s family. If you know someone is ill, show your concern.

• Show your sense of humor. Laugh when funny things happen in class—especially when they happen to you.

• Speak to every student each day. Leave no one out of class discussions.

• Write notes to your students. Use plenty of stickers, and write positive comments on their papers.

• Make a positive phone call home when a student’s effort is paying off.

• Pay attention to your students’ health. If students need to go to the clinic, send them. When students have to miss several days because of illness, call to see how they are doing, or send a get-well card. Be prompt in sending work to the student’s home

• Use this sentence to convey your concern: “What can I do to help you?”

• Talk with students when you notice a change in their behavior. For example, if a normally serious student is neglecting his or her work, find out why.

• Take the time to tell your students what you like about them.

• Take photographs of your students. Use these photos on a wall of pride.