It’s my great pleasure to introduce you to our friend Elizabeth Rosenthal. Sarah and I became friends with Elizabeth through our college church at University of Central Florida.   As an experienced art teacher, Elizabeth has a great passion for helping elementary school students to be creative.   She would enjoy connecting with you at elizabeth.rosenthal@ocps.net . 

By: Elizabeth Rosenthal

As educators, we don’t always get the chance to see how our teaching affects our students.  So I decided to take a poll of Mrs. G’s 5^th grade class to get their feedback on what makes for a great teacher.  Some of the answers are what you would expect from a 5^th grader, but there are a few answers that I found charming and enlightening.

But first, a letter thanking you for all that you do:

Dear Teacher,

It’s been a long time, but I wanted to let you know that I remember what you taught me.

I know you think that I am talking about what I learned in your class, but I learned other stuff too. Like how to be a better person. 

I really thought it was great when you told us how you expected us to behave at the beginning of the year, and even though I broke the rules sometimes, I liked that I had some guidance. 

Your class was hard, but I liked that it was hard because I felt like more was expected from me and I felt challenged.

Thanks also for providing opportunities for me to succeed.  I always knew I liked drawing, but I never thought I could do something with it.  Thanks for telling me I was good and telling me to pick up a pencil everyday and practice.  

Also, I never really saw that I was great until you told me I was.

Sincerely,

Student

Special Credit goes to Mrs. G’s class for providing me with insight into what makes a great teacher:

• A.Q.: I think that a great teacher is thoughtful, caring, sweet and helpful.  She is strict when she needs to be and nice when she needs to be.  She gives out good work and homework and grades it the right way and if we don’t get it she helps us.  She lets us go to the bathroom when we need to, and get a drink of water without raising our hand and lets us do errands and help out because she trusts us. That’s what I love about Mrs. G and what I think is best from a teacher.
• M.C.: My favorite teacher motivated me.
• A.M: Ensena, ayuda, y es divertida (She teaches, helps, and is fun).
• L.C: A good teacher gives you candy and is nice and smart.
• Y.G.: What makes a great teacher is that they are fun, nice, helpful, and they don’t yell.
• M.B.: What makes a good teacher is when she does hands on Science with us.
• G.W.: My favorite teacher was when I was in kindergarten; she let us meet a famous basketball player so she was never on my bad side.
• L.E.: A great teacher is some one who has respect and treats you equally like others.
• K. M.: A great teacher is a teacher who can control a class.
• A.B.: A great teacher is kind to kids and wants them to complete school and have education for themselves.
• L.R.: What makes a great teacher is that they have to be nice, caring, loving, and fun.  She has to be a little strict with the bad kids and she has to give out treats to the good kids.
• D.W.: A great teacher would have to be nice and have a sense of humor, and also be a great explainer and teacher.
• J.P.: What I see in a teacher: My 5^th grade teacher inspires me to be a teacher. She is nice, cool, gives you candy, and doesn’t yell that much.
• A.P.: They have to be smart, and they have to be nice, and not punish the whole class.
• P.S.: A great teacher is if they help me do some work after school and gives me ways to pass the FCAT.
• N.S.: A good teacher is when they don’t punish the whole class when it is one or two people and then takes the good students outside.
• S. C. What makes a great teacher to me? My first grade teacher was the best teacher ever.  Her name was Mrs. Grinner. For my birthday we had cupcakes.  I think that a teacher should give you candy, let you have fun games, center games, and doesn’t yell about everything you do.
• M.M.: What makes a great teacher? When they give prizes, helps you a lot, and lets you play games.
• C.S.: I think a great teacher is a person who you can relate to, someone who is interesting and makes learning interesting. A great teacher is someone who’s funny and gives treats. My favorite teacher would also be nice, looks innocent, not mean and weird.  My best teacher is my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Sterling. She is nice, pretty, and interesting. Also a great teacher is someone who punishes a couple of students instead of the whole class and doesn’t give a lot of homework, but just enough to make it fun.

So, what can we learn from these students and what can be said about what makes a great teacher? Perhaps you can think of a teacher right now who has impacted you, motivated you, and encouraged you. A teacher who set you on the track of success and showed the traits of dedication, resilience, and passion every day in their teaching and maybe, just maybe they are the reason why you are a teacher today.

Teachers, never forget or underestimate your ability to inspire those you teach.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathycassidy/8522478858/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Two things that I’ve come across this week have made me think about the issue of trust in the classroom. The first was Michael Hyatt’s podcast on building (or rebuilding) trust which can be found here. He breaks down the process of building trust into 4 basic components:

1. Keep your word.
2. Tell the truth.
3. Be transparent.
4. Give without any strings attached.

This seems like common sense advice, but harder to implement than we might think. The second thing that made me think about the issue of trust was an article in the Onion. Wait. You mean the satirical newspaper? Yep. That one. It was a spoof on student evaluations. In the article a professor is devastated by a negative evaluation by a slacker student (found here). I often find reviews like this one amusing more than anything, but I do read negative reviews carefully. As a professor I don’t want to put too much stock into student opinions, my job is not to “entertain” students or make them feel good, my job is to teach. Some things cannot be controlled, for example the difficulty of the subject matter, or the laziness of the students. On the other hand, a negative review can be the result of a strained relationship between a teacher and their students. Here are a few ideas for maintaining a good student-teacher relationship in the classroom:

1. Clearly define your expectations. Put together a syllabus that clearly outlines your classroom policies and learning objectives. Don’t be vague. The syllabus does not need to be a complete outline of the entire course, but is should be an anchor for the students and the professor to refer to as they travel through the course. It lays down the ground rules and the consequences for breaking them. If a student tries to turn in a late assignment or misses too many classes, you can simply point to the syllabus when they come crying about a grade.
2. Don’t make a habit of making exceptions. This will only create headaches (trust me, I’ve learned this from experience. Once you give in on one policy, the entire house of cards will come tumbling down. That said, be compassionate. Sometimes there are things that are outside of a student’s control and it does not serve the greater purpose of education to simply stick to the rules for the rules’ sake.
3. Treat your students with dignity and respect. Too often professors treat their adult students like children. Yes, we need to hold our students accountable for their behavior in the classroom, but we do not need to babysit them. Don’t accommodate bad behavior (being late to class, missing assignments). Let students feel the consequences, but don’t create an adversarial relationship.
4. Be organized and keep your word. I’m guilty of telling students that an assignment would be graded over the weekend and then failing to do the grading. When I let myself get overwhelmed I let my self-imposed deadlines slip. In other words, don’t make promises you can’t keep. Design your courses in such a way that there is a rhythm and an order that is easy to follow. Don’t take on too much.

I am by no means perfect at implementing these approaches. I am still learning how to be a good teacher, but these are just a few of the lessons that I have learned along the way. I hope that someone else might find them helpful!

This is a great talk to share with your graduating seniors. Love Jon Acuff’s humor!!

On August 29, 2011 at Convocation, North America’s largest weekly gathering of Christian students, Jon Acuff entertained students with witty jokes about current trends on college campuses. Jon Acuff is a Christian blogger and author of the book ‘Stuff Christians Like’.

I am sitting in my office near the end of the Spring semester and I am surrounded by piles of paper (see the above picture- yes that is from my office). For the most part, these piles consist of assignments, lab reports, quizzes, exams, etc, that I have long since graded, but students have failed to pick up. Each semester, I dutifully box up the unclaimed papers and save them for the requisite two semesters before they are summarily dumped into the box destined for the shredder. I hate paper. It clutters up my life and keeps me from thinking clearly. It is distracting and it makes it hard for me to keep track of what is done and what is left to be done.

I am currently taking a training class on online teaching. One of the tools that we have discussed is a dropbox for student submissions. We use the Desire2Learn LMS, but I’m sure that the other systems have similar functions. While the training class was focused on using this tool for an online class, I think it would be incredible useful for my traditional classes. If nothing else, it will reduce the amount of paper that piles up in my office each semester.

Assignments where I plan on using the dropbox for student submission:

1)      Lab reports. Each lab report includes a summary of the procedures for a given lab, the results, conclusions and a set of given discussion questions.

2)      Article summaries. Students are required to find articles in the general media related to the topics covered in class. I ask them to write a short summary of the article, describe how it relates to the material we’ve covered in class and why they thought it was interesting.

3)      Unknowns project. I am thinking about implementing a project in which the students will have to identify an unknown microorganism. They will write a report summarizing the biochemical tests they used to identify the organisms. This report will include a dichotomous key and a profile of the microorganism they identify.

I am actually planning on shifting to this approach for my traditional delivery course in the Fall. I already require my students to submit lab reports and article summaries, so this will just be shifting these assignments into the virtual space. I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantage. Top on my list is that it will cut down on the amount of paper that have in my office. There will be no chance that I could lose or misplace an assignment (which has been known to happen).  The other advantage is that students will have a more clearly defined deadline. I will probably still accept late assignments, but I think this will cut down on the number of assignments that trickle in after the due date. The disadvantages will probably be related to technical problems. Students without decent access to a PC at home (which should not be an issue if they signed up for an online class!), or with remedial computer skills will struggle with getting the assignments turned in on time. I will try to mitigate these problems by providing as much technical support as possible and writing out clear instructions for submission.

Each of these assignments will be graded out of a possible 100 points using a rubric that I will provide to the students. I will grade the assignments and provide feedback, as I see fit, within the comments section of the gradebook. Grading is one of the hardest parts of my job. I often get overwhelmed with the piles of papers and tests to grade, but I think that this tool will allow me to better manage the work flow, rather than overwhelm me. What is your experience using online submission tools? I know that some professors utilize programs like TurnItIn.com. Are there others that work better? I’d love to hear from you!