Top Ten Things I Learned about Teaching This Year

The school year’s almost over, or maybe it is over for some of you lucky people. You’re checking in books, correcting exams, and closing up the grade book. You know that some of your lessons really met the objectives and the kids learned a lot. They caught the spark and you could see how the new understanding captured their interest.

But what did you learn? Did you catch that spark? Did you have an ah-ha moment? I’m out of the classroom and able to talk education experts. Here are my ah-ha moments:

Why Don’t Students Finish College and What Can We Do to Help?

When our students leave the school systems, just 25 percent of them will have the full-time college experience that we think of: residence halls, football games, fraternity or sorority membership, and maybe a job for a little pocket money.

A Public Agenda Report found that 45 percent of students at four-year universities work 20 hours or more. More than half of the community college students work more than 20 hours a week and more than a quarter work 35 hours or more. Twenty-three percent of all college students have children.

What’s Good Teaching If Students Don’t Feel in Control?

For 10 years Raymond Perry, a psychologist at the University of Manitoba, has been studying the relationship between attributes students bring to class and the quality of instruction they receive there. His studies unite two important lines of research, heretofore considered unrelated.

During the time they spend at our institutions, students face a variety of personal and societal pressures. There are also academic pressures, of course: They must write papers, work in groups, make presentations, and take exams. Their ability to meet these challenges successfully depends on certain attributes they bring to class.

Have You Compromised with Your Students?

On Monday presenter and former superintendent Suzanne Tingley offered an Inside the School online seminar about Middle School Classroom Management. She talked about the importance of engaging every student, even the middle schooler with a short attention span.

Tingley also has a blog for administrators at Scholastic, Practical Leadership. One of her blog posts, The Compromise, is about the tacit agreement some teachers have with their students. Tingley blogged about educator Theodore Sizer’s book Horace’s Compromise, in which Sizer wrote that some teachers would rather students be quiet than learn.

Keeping Students in Class and out of the Principal’s Office

Most of students’ challenging behaviors have their roots in factors that come from outside the school, said Allen Mendler, Ph.D., author of Discipline with Dignity. “It’s mostly out-of school factors that are at the core of most discipline problems such as dysfunctional families, unsupportive parents, violence in our culture, garbage on TV, erosion of respect and morality, and drug and alcohol use,” he said.

Survey Says Student Motivation High, Part Two

The Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations (www.qisa.org ) and the Educational Assessment group of Pearson surveyed 414,000 secondary school students about their engagement at school.

What the survey found is that students want to succeed and they need teachers and schools to support them in their success. Students often don’t feel that teachers or schools believe in them and their success or give them opportunities for leadership and decision making.

Survey Says Student Motivation High, Part One

In a recent My Voice survey from the Educational Assessment group of Pearson and the Quaglia Institute, researchers found only 48 percent of students felt that teachers cared about them as individuals and 45 percent felt that teachers cared if they were absent from school. Sixty-five percent said they have a teacher who is a positive role model.

“What these results illustrate is that while teachers have the potential to inspire students, they are not doing so in ways that students recognize,” said Dr. Russell J. Quaglia, founder of the My Voice survey. “Most troubling is the fact that over half the students in this country don’t think teachers care if they even show up.”

Motivating Unmotivated Students: Why Your Students Aren’t Motivated and How to Help Them Care

Pete is a high school junior who loves working with cars, but hates reading Steinbeck. He plans to go to vocational school when he graduates and will maybe be a welder, a construction worker, or an auto mechanic. Pete just doesn’t see the point of all of these required English classes. He doesn’t open his textbook, doesn’t see a reason to write, and doesn’t read at grade level. He’s bored, uninterested, and he’s looking to liven things up a bit.

Sarrah is Pete’s teacher. She teaches in a small, rural Wisconsin high school where many students are like Pete. They don’t plan to go to college and they don’t see the relevance of the curriculum to their plans to go into the workforce, military, or vocational/technical school.