Teacherscribe's Teaching Thought #2

Teaching Thought #2

What do students want out of us?

On the choir tour in San Francisco several students and I were at a restaurant when I asked them the simple question: What do teachers do that you dislike?

Here were their responses – they dislike it when teachers stand over their shoulders and watch them work.  They dislike when teachers are mean or crabby.  They dislike when teachers expect everyone to learn at the same pace.  They dislike when teachers aren’t approachable.  They dislike when teachers can’t explain (in language that they can understand) why they are failing to grasp a concept.   They dislike boring slideshows or keynotes (they can easily tell when teachers don’t put the time and effort into their slideshows because they can just look up the pre-made slideshows on line).  They dislike not having time to get caught up in class.

Now, I’ll be the first to say – as I did at the table that night to these students – there is another side to this story.  I gave them a personal example – I gave my seniors a whole week to work on their final papers.  Yet, I watched one student who was unmotivated and just wanted to watch Netflix instead of work.  Even when I asked her about it, she said she worked better at home.  So I told this group of students that such an example makes me want to cut down on time given during the day to complete work.

They didn’t have a great answer for that other than they thought this example was a minority.  And it may well be.  But I wanted them to see that all of these issues have two different sides to them.

Just keep in mind, it never hurts to check the students’ pulses once in a while and see what they think about our customer service.