If there is one thing we know about kids, it’s that they have short attention spans and prefer now to later. Teachers, more than any district or schoolwide programs, have the most power to motivate students because they’re on the front lines. They can influence students in a way that kids can actually understand: here, now, today, in this room.

***Obviously, not enough can be said about parent involvement, but that’s a Top 12 list for another day***

In Your Classroom or School

1. Praise Students in Ways Big and Small

Recognize work in class, display good work in the classroom and send positive notes home to parents, hold weekly awards in your classroom, organize academic pep rallies to honor the honor roll, and even sponsor a Teacher Shoutout section in the student newspaper to acknowledge student’s hard work.

2. Expect Excellence

Set high, yet realistic expectations. Make sure to voice those expectations. Set short terms goals and celebrate when they are achieved.

3. Spread Excitement Like a Virus

Show your enthusiasm in the subject & use appropriate, concrete and understandable examples to help students grasp it. For example, I love alliteration. Before I explain the concept to students, we “improv” subjects they’re interested in. After learning about alliteration, they brainstorm alliterative titles for their chosen subjects.

4. Mix It Up

It’s a classic concept and the basis for differentiated instruction, but it needs to be said: using a variety of teaching methods caters to all types of learners. By doing this in an orderly way, you can also maintain order in your classroom. In a generic example for daily instruction, journal for 10 minutes to open class; introduce the concept for 15 minutes; discuss/group work for 15 minutes; Q&A or guided work time to finish the class. This way, students know what to expect everyday and have less opportunity to act up.

5. Assign Classroom Jobs

With students, create a list of jobs for the week. Using the criteria of your choosing, let students earn the opportunity to pick their classroom jobs for the next week. These jobs can cater to their interests and skills. Some possibilities include:

• Post to the Class blog

• Update Calendar

• Moderate review games

• Pick start of class music

• Watch class pet

• Public relations officer (address people who visit class)

• Standard class jobs like Attendance, Cleaning the boards, putting up chairs, etc.

6. Hand Over Some Control

If students take ownership of what you do in class, then they have less room to complain (though we all know, it’ll never stop completely). Take an audit of your class, asking what they enjoy doing, what helps them learn, what they’re excited about after class. Multiple choice might be the best way to start if you predict a lot of “nothing” or “watch movies” answers.

After reviewing the answers, integrate their ideas into your lessons or guide a brainstorm session on how these ideas could translate into class.

On a systematic level, let students choose from elective classes in a collegiate format. Again, they can tap into their passion and relate to their subject matter if they have a choice.

7. Open-format Fridays

You can also translate this student empowerment into an incentive program. Students who attended class all week, completed all assignments and obeyed all classroom rules can vote on Friday’s activities (lecture, discussion, watching a video, class jeopardy, acting out a scene from a play or history).

8. Relating Lessons to Students’ Lives

Whether it is budgeting for family Christmas gifts, choosing short stories about your town, tying in the war of 1812 with Iraq, rapping about ions, or using Pop Culture Printables, students will care more if they identify themselves or their everyday lives in what they’re learning.

9. Track Improvement

In those difficult classes, it can feel like a never-ending uphill battle, so try to remind students that they’ve come a long way. Set achievable, short-term goals, emphasis improvement, keep self-evaluation forms to fill out and compare throughout the year, or revisit mastered concepts that they once struggled with to refresh their confidence.

10. Reward Positive Behavior Outside the Classroom

Tie service opportunities, cultural experiences, extracurricular activities into the curriculum for extra credit or as alternative options on assignments. Have students doing Habitat for Humanity calculate the angle of the freshly cut board, count the nails in each stair and multiply the number of stairs to find the total number of nails; write an essay about their experience volunteering or their how they felt during basketball tryouts; or any other creative option they can come up with.

Beyond the Classroom

The idea of cash incentives is a timely yet controversial topic, so I’d like to look at this attempt to “buy achievement” through a different lens. It seems people are willing to dump some money into schools, so let’s come up with better ways to spend it.

11. Plan Dream Field Trips

With your students, brainstorm potential field trips tiered by budget. Cash incentive money can then be earned toward the field trips for good behavior, performance, etc. The can see their success in the classroom as they move up from the decent zoo field trip to the good state capitol day trip to the unbelievable week-long trip to New York City. Even though the reward is delayed, tracking progress will give students that immediate reward.

12. College Fund Accounts

College dreams motivate athletes; why not adapt the academic track to be just as tangible for hard-working student. One way is to keep a tally of both the cash value and the potential school choice each student has earned. As freshman, they see they’ve earned one semester at the local junior college. By second semester of junior year, they’re going to four-years at State for half the price. By graduation, watch out free ride to their dream school.

During my travels, I asked more than 500 students from across the country the question, “What are the three most important lessons that you’ve learned in life?” Below is a compilation of their responses (all duplicate/similar answers were either combined or eliminated):
* Put God first in all you do.
* Be yourself.
* Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
* Love yourself enough to love others.
* Measure your success by how many times you refuse to give up.
* Be thankful and grateful for what God has given you.
* Set long-term and short-term goals for your life.
* A lie never dies…so don’t give birth to one.
* If you can’t get excited about living, you might as well be dead.
* Follow your heart.
* Have faith in your life because you’re here for a purpose.
* Everything happens for a reason, and everything will eventually work out.
* Stand behind your convictions (keep your integrity).
* The best thing you can leave behind is a good impression.
* Choose your friends carefully.
* Value education, not only classroom instruction, but life lessons as well.
* Love the Lord with all your heart.
* Speak up for yourself.
* Build bridges…you never know when you have to cross one.
* Have faith when you’re in the valley of life.
* Solve your own problems through the power of God.
* Knowledge is power.
* Never pray for something you can’t handle.
* Respect your parents…your life will be a lot easier.
* Always respect yourself.
* Do for yourself.
* Think before you run (to or from it).
* Build a strong family.
* To thy ownself be true.
* Stay in prayer.
* Be an example, not an excuse.
* It’s much cheaper to borrow experience than to buy it (learn from other people’s mistakes).
I must admit, it was surprising, as well as refreshing, to see that students are actually paying attention to what we say and do. Contrary to popular opinion, our work is not in vain.
As the father, I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciated each student’s participation in this exercise. These are definitely lessons I would like to pass on to my son. I’m sure you would agree that we could all enrich our lives tremendously if we just took action on only 25% of the lessons listed on this page.
I personally believe that the hardest lesson in life is our failure to master the easy ones. When we fail to master the easy ones [lessons], they soon become hard ones. Don’t you become a victim to the easy lessons. Make sure all of your mistakes are new ones.

One night I was sitting outside looking up at the stars after a very hectic day at my studio. Many thoughts crossed my mind that night but there was one that was most prominent. And I must admit this thought was uncomfortable because it became apparent that some of the students that I was working hard on coaching and teaching had ideas of fame and fortune way before they were ready to handle it. Why was it uncomfortable you may ask, it was

uncomfortable because it was obvious I was teaching students who wanted to leap instead of walk towards their dance goals. Of course it’s only natural for students to want to speed things up but it’s also important as a teacher to help students understand that dance must be learned in its own time. I think this is where negative experiences come from; dancers performing before they are ready. With dance there are many venues and there are certain protocols with each venue that must be learned, “first.” As teachers we share our own personal experiences from our journeys in dance and we shape and mold our curriculum accordingly. This also means teaching etiquette along with instruction. This being said, what do we do when we have an occasional student who wants fame more than she wants training or etiquette?  

What became apparent in class was an individual drive by a specific few to get ahead at all costs. It’s not always easy to see this as a teacher and sometimes a dancer can hide it quite well. I can remember an instance when a student wanted me to perform with her but she wanted me to be a back up dancer for her. What I was being asked to do was watch her teach a class up on a stage and follow her instruction. I told her I supported her a hundred percent but that she should do the venue on her own. It’s tough knowing how to word your opinion and not hurt a students feelings. If I would have been her back up dancer, the teacher-student relationship would have been lost forever because than she would have seen herself in my shoes. My shoes fit only me and my size and besides that my shoes took years to wear in and get comfy.  

Years of training students has blessed me with seeing a few dancers that were exceptional in our dance. Some of them have gone on and are dancing and gracing our stages with their amazing talent even today. Than there are those students that are exceptional but who go off thinking the world owes them. The impatience of these dancers can be so costly. One student in particular had great potential but she was impatient and wanted to dance everywhere immediately. I was dancing at a restaurant at the time and would occasionally get calls for parties on the nights I was dancing. So I sent her out in my stead to a few parties and requested that she give my card out if anyone asked for one since I was the contact person. I found out that she gave out her cards and told the people to call her if they ever needed another dancer. To some of you who are not acquainted with our dance etiquette, it is protocol to give out the card of the person who sent you to a job, especially if it is your teacher. I don’t ask for a percentage, I just ask my dancers to perform professionally and do a good job. My student than became my competition after a few more gigs and I realized that not only was she taking money away from me but she was doing it right under my nose. So I did what any decent teacher would do, I tried to kick myself in the pants and move on.

Dancing at restaurants can really give a dancer a chance to work on her form and technique. Years ago I had a student night at a restaurant that allowed my girls to perform on Wednesdays. It gave them a chance to experience dance in a public setting that was safe and welcoming. I had a few students that really enjoyed dancing and danced most of the Wednesdays. After awhile I noticed that some of these students started to come to class less and less yet they still insisted on dancing at the restaurant. So I had to let them know that while I was proud of them, they had to continue with class so they could get in more training. To my surprise one student told me that she was told by a customer that she was as good as the weekend dancers and why wasn’t she dancing on the weekends? Come to find out this customer was her husband and he said this infront of their friends who all thought the same thing. Yet not one of the friends or husband had come to a show on the weekends so they could actually see the difference between professional dancing and student dancing. She insisted on auditioning for the weekend shows and wanted to be paid for her Wednesday performances. What I had worked out for the girls was dinner and they kept their tips. So I told her the decision for the weekends would be up to the owner not me but that I felt she wasn’t ready for an audition. She got angry and left my studio and didn’t return but decided to go to the restaurant owner herself to get an audition. I was informed by the owner that she came in and that he told her she was not ready for an audition because she needed more training. She told him about what a “customer” had said and unfortunately this peaked his interest. So he gave her an audition and I was asked to be there to give him my opinion of her performance. Well as you can imagine I had plenty to say but I kept my cool and I went the night she was to audition. Like I thought, she bombed and she was mortified. It was a hard lesson for her to learn and for me to witness. She left and I never saw her again and I found out through the grapevine that she stopped dancing. There is not one teacher out there that ever wishes for this type of lesson on any student. But sometimes the Universe has no choice but to show the harsh realities of what can happen when you lose your humility. And as her teacher there was nothing more to be said.

Sometimes when you work well with your students it can be easy to forget the teacher-student relationship. Let’s face it our students are some of the coolest people on the planet and shows and venues can be a lot of work. Having good help can make a huge difference in the outcome of a show. The important thing is to make sure you don’t bring in a student as an equal into a show before she has paid her dues with experience. I learned this the hard way almost two years ago with a show that a dance friend and I collaborated on. I brought in my student because she had a theatrical background. She became the third producer of the show and that is when the problems began.

Once she became a producer our relationship changed and I noticed that the respect that she once had for me was slowly slipping away. At the end of the production our relationship had taken a nose dive. Unfortunately there was no going back to what I had established with her. The one thing that I did was create my nemesis because I gave her a taste of what took me years to learn and understand. Weeks later after the show premiered she wanted to take the show on the road and I had to say no. I didn’t do this to be mean, I did this because I felt she needed to do things on her own as I did so she could appreciate what it takes to earn her place in her community. Without knowing it I gave her a false sense of authority that eventually was used on some of the other dancers to their chagrin. Lessons like this one can take months to evaluate and reflect on. Sometimes when I look back I feel like I lost something that can never be replaced but than life teaches us that we must continue on our path. Looking back keeps us from seeing what is infront of us.

What can any teacher do when she has worked with a student and has shared with her all her hard earned knowledge and the student runs with her curriculum? This includes; choreography, style, and verbiage. A wonderful mentor of mine, Romana Frasson taught me a lesson in teaching that I will never forget. She said that I had to teach from experience and the heart in order for my students to believe in me. Sometimes this can be a double edged sword. Because when we put so much of our passion into our classes, we can lose ourselves in the lesson. Once a student learns her teachers curriculum and has success with understanding the lessons and methodology, she than becomes the end result of a joint effort. We hope that students take what they learn and carry on the message and training. But sometimes what we thought we taught our students can get lost in agendas and issues. This is a phenomenon that baffles me to no end. I have dance friends who have taught students for years and all of a sudden I’ll notice that the student is gone and there is no mention of ever studying with their former teacher. It’s almost as if the years of mentoring became lost and ended up on the way side of obscurity. What these dancers don’t understand is that they take away with them the years of experience their teacher gave to them. At the same time do any of these students feel any loyalty after they leave?  Looking back at some of the students who left my studio, I haven’t heard a peep from them and I occasionally see them. Sometimes we just have to let it be and know everybody is where they need to be.  

This is one of those topics that can create a lot of emotional upheaval in many dancers. I know it does with me. And let’s face it there are two sides to every point of view. Only after I became a teacher did I finally understand what my teachers went through. It took me sitting outside that one starry night thinking about my students to finally appreciate the role my former teachers played in my dance career. Maybe once we appreciate what we have learned in our dance can we stand on our own two feet and say “Thank you” to all those teachers who helped make us what we are. Than I thought to myself is it really this easy? What is the real problem when we teach students and the relationship goes sour?  How can anybody know the true story of each dancer that walks into her studio or learns her choreography? If a student is willing to take a curriculum from a teacher and claim it as hers, than we have to look at what we are really dealing with. What creates this phenomenon starts with principals and values kept aside at a young age. If the home place is dysfunctional to start with for any student, than we end up dealing with the side effects that tickle down and materialize into various problems. The signs aren’t always easy to see until problems emerge. But if we could understand better the characteristics of a student rival than we could prepare ourselves to cope with this dilemma. If we can do this than in the end we won’t lose any aspects of ourselves. 

Introduction

According to Powell, “He who has no inclination to learn more will be very apt to think that he knows enough.”

Classrooms are social settings; teaching and learning occur through social interaction between teachers and students. As teaching and learning take place, they are complicated processes and are affected by peer-group relationships. The interactions and relationships between teachers and students, and among students, as they work side by side, constitute the group processes of the classroom.

Group processes are especially significant in twenty-first century schools. Group projects and cooperative teamwork are the foundations of effective teaching, creative curriculum, and positive classroom climate. Interpersonal skills, group work, and empathy are important ingredients of modern business, where employees must communicate well for their business to be productive and profitable. Group processes are also significant in modern global communities, where citizens must work together for a safe and secure world. Thus, along with teaching academic curriculum, teachers are expected to help students develop the attitudes, skills, and procedures of democratic community.

Teacher-student relationships provide an essential foundation for effective classroom management—and classroom management is a key to high student achievement. Teacher-student relationships should not be left to chance or dictated by the personalities of those involved. Instead, by using strategies supported by research, teachers can influence the dynamics of their classrooms and build strong teacher-student relationships that will support student learning.

Smith (1990) said, “Teachers who love their students are of course by that very fact teaching their students the nature of love, although the course may in fact be chemistry or computer science.” He thoroughly endorses out-of-class contacts between students and faculty, “because they reveal something to the student about reality that can, I suspect, be learned no other way. Such contracts demonstrate that ideas are ‘embodied.’ They do not exist apart from a person, remote or near at hand, who enunciates, who takes responsibility for them by declaring them, by speaking about them.” Or in the words of Woodrow Wilson, “We shall never succeed in creating this organic passion, this great use of the mind until (we) have utterly destroyed the practice of merely formal contacts between teacher and pupil.”

Literature Review

Wubbels and his colleagues (Wubbels, Brekelmans, van Tartwijk, & Admiral, 1999;

Wubbels & Levy, 1993) identify appropriate dominance as an important characteristic of effective teacher-student relationships. In contrast to the more negative connotation of the term dominance as forceful control or command over others, they define dominance as the teacher’s ability to provide clear purpose and strong guidance regarding both academics and student behavior. Studies indicate that when asked about their preferences for teacher behavior, students typically express a desire for this type of teacher-student interaction. For example, in a study that involved interviews with more than 700 students in grades 4–7, students articulated a clear preference for strong teacher guidance and control rather than more permissive types of teacher behavior (Chiu & Tulley, 1997). Teachers can exhibit appropriate dominance by establishing clear behavior expectations and learning goals and by exhibiting assertive behavior.

Class Description

The present study observed a class of thirty students of Sylhet Women’s College. The teacher was a Bangladeshi male with several years teaching experience at Bangladeshi government colleges. The goal of this class is to teach the students’ conversation, reading, listening and writing skills. Their English ability level is intermediate. During the observation period, the students appeared motivated and attentive, and they seemed to be enjoying the class. The researcher observed class being out of the notice of the students.

Identification of Problem

It is observed that the students didn’t respond willingly to the teacher’s questions and did not participate in class discussions. Students also never asked the teacher questions outside one-on-one situations. Thus the teacher received little oral feedback Most of the learners sit looking straight ahead using minimal facial expressions, gestures and verbal utterances. The teacher said, “I want the students to be more demonstrative and more overtly communicative in their feedback. I want these behaviours: I want the students to ask me questions, make comments and to respond with nods and shakes of the head, with sounds of agreement or sounds of understanding. Also, I want them to be both reactive and proactive”.

Investigation

The present researcher observed the 2nd year of Higher Secondary Class. In the first 30 minutes, the class went through an intermediate level oral dialogue. The students first listened to the dialogue read out by the teacher with their books closed, then again with the books opened. Next, they did a dictation exercise consisting of 15 short sentences based on the dialogue. The teacher then talked about the sociolinguistic and grammar points of the exercise and went on to probe for comprehension:

The teacher asked a few other questions which also drew no response or reaction from the students. The students then had to answer some questions about the conversation in their book. Most of the students seemed to have little trouble doing this, and if there were any questions, they readily asked the student sitting next to them. The second half of the class was devoted to pair work using the phrases and vocabulary from the taped dialogue in role play. The students seemed to enjoy this, and most tried to create their own dialogues. The teacher circulated the room checking on the progress of each pair. The class atmosphere was markedly different from the first half of the class, with chatter and occasional laughter filling the air. The students answered most of the teacher’s questions with alacrity, and some even asked their own questions.

Analysis of the Observation

It is found that the students of the reviewing class generally understand the teacher’s questions; it was felt that there was something else that kept the students from responding voluntarily in the class-teacher dialogues. Since most Bangladeshi students are taught to listen and not to question a teacher in class, Bangladeshi students have little or no experience in in-class interaction with the teacher, such as questioning or commenting or giving feedback. Students are usually taught to be quiet and respectfully listen to the teacher. By teaching the students that class interaction with the English teacher is not only acceptable, but normal, useful and beneficial, it was believed that the students would become more interactive with the teacher in teacher-class interaction.

Suggestions for the Teachers

1. How do you encourage students to be active and interested?

2. How do you deal with apathetic students?

3. How do you get my students to prepare for class?

4. How can you recognize different learning abilities and work with them individually?

Conclusion

There were some areas where the results of this action research were not as successful as hoped. For instance, the students needed to be prompted with eye contact and a repeated question from the teacher to answer a question, and when they did not understand something, they still did not interrupt the teacher with a question. And yet some progress was definitely made, especially when the brief span between observations is considered. The students did interact with the teacher by nodding, some did answer the instructor’s questions, and two, on their own initiation, even asked questions before the class. The unanticipated side effect of the teacher becoming more concerned with the interaction was a welcome surprise and contributed to the improvement. There seems to have been some success in instructing and reminding and then expecting the students to become more interactive with the teacher.

Reference

Aronson, Elliot, and Patnoe, S. 1997. Cooperation in the Classroom: The Jigsaw Method. New York: Longman.

Cohen, Elizabeth G. 1994. Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom, 2nd edition. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.

Dewey, John. 1916. Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan.

Good, Thomas, and Brophy, Jere E. 1997. Looking in Classrooms, 7th edition. New York: Harper and Row.

Johnson, David W., and Johnson, Roger T. 1992. Learning Together and Learning Alone, 3rd edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Lewin, Kurt. 1948. Resolving Social Conflicts. New York: Harper.

Miles, Matthew. 1981. Learning to Work in Groups, 2nd edition. New York: Teachers College Press.

Setting goals is an important aspect of a successful independent reading program. Students must have something to strive for – a goal to reach, a purpose. Setting goals also gives more autonomy to the students as they reed, for they know that they alone are responsible for reaching their reading goals. Before setting goals, you must first target each individual students reading level. Check your schools adopted reading series for a reading comprehension test, and use it to determine a targeted reading range
Once reading levels have been targeted for your students, you are now ready to set school semester goals for them. There are a variety of ways that this can be done. One way is to instruct the student to read a certain number of books in a certain period of time. You can also use a point system goal based on the points you have assigned your class library books, as mentioned earlier in this course. The idea here is to set some sort of goal that the student is to accomplish by the end of the grading period. The goal needs to be a challenge, yet attainable through the amount of class time you designate for reading.
In setting goals for your students, you must also have a way to help them track their goals. Students may seem overwhelmed by looking ahead at the larger picture. Break down the goal for them, and teach them how to track their goals into weekly expectations. For instance, if the goal is to read six books by the end of the six-week grading period, break it down, and explain that means that they should be reading at least one book per week. Having smaller goals will help them stay focused and reach the larger goal without getting frustrated. The same goes with points. If the student needs to earn 30 points in the six week term, help them break it down into the number of points they need to earn each week, which, in turn, leads to guiding them to select books worth that many points.
Many students will meet their goals prior to the end of the grading period. Make it clear early on that this doesn’t mean they can quit reading. Make it a challenge to see how far they can surpass their goal. More will be discussed on this in the lesson on rewards, but offer rewards for going above and beyond the initial goal set.