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Category Archives: positive climate
Helping students find their way to success
Some students do not have the work habits that make it easy for them to be successful in school. In class, I talk a lot about the characteristics of successful people and the role that perseverance plays in their success. Unfortunately, perseverance is not the only thing some of my students lack. They lack another important characteristic that successful people share. They lack the emotional support they need to help them be successful. Some students don’t have anyone there for them when the going get tough or even to help them celebrate life’s successes great or small. That’s where I come in. I try to give them the emotional support they need to help them find their way to success at school.
Sometimes students will work on projects and assignments but for any number of reasons don’t submit the assignments for evaluation. They seem to run out of energy, interest or whatever and just give up. I’m always encouraging them to submit things so I can give them the marks they’ve earned. I’m constantly telling them if they don’t hand things in it makes it very difficult for me to find marks to give them. I don’t find it useful to tell them that if they don’t hand work in they’ll fail. They’re used to hearing that. They’re used to failing. I take a different approach. I tell them they have to help me find the marks they need to pass them. Yes, of course it would be nice if my students just wanted to learn for the sake of learning, but that’s not the way it is for some students. I have to start where from where my students are.
I used to get very frustrated when I would see my students working on assignments in class and then not submit them for evaluation. In fact, it used to drive me crazy. I’ve learned to observe and record their progress during the time they work in class so that if for some reason they don’t submit an assignment, I still have some sense of their progress and can evaluate what I have seen. Believe me, there are many reasons why assignments don’t get handed in. Not completing them is only one reason.
It’s important to know that some of my more reluctant/struggling students are not interested in getting high marks. They feel they’ve aced the course when they get 51%. I know because they’ve told me this. Of course I encourage my students to do more than the bare minimum and will often tell them they’ve made a good start. Then, I encourage them to improve their work by suggesting if they just changed this a bit here or expanded on that a bit there I could find more marks to give them. Believe me. It works.
I’ll admit this whole idea of finding marks to give students for assignments they have or have not submitted can seem a bit strange. But, and this is a big but, I teach students who are at-risk academically, and I need to think creatively to find ways to motivate them and give them the support they need so they can find their way to success. That’s what makes teaching so rewarding.
Posted in "At-risk" students, assignments, Behaviour Management, creative ways of finding marks to give students, emotional support for students, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, Evaluation, giving students emotional support, helping students succeed, lack, marks, motivating students, my , perseverance, perseverance in school, positive climate, Special Education, submit, success, supporting at-risk students, The way I see it, underachieving students, work habits
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It takes a lot of teacher effort to make math easy.
Over the years, I’ve found that it takes a lot of effort to make math easy for my students. End of semester exams are fast approaching, and I am doing my utmost to prepare my students. I’ve created some new review material for my grade nine math students that I hoped would help them better understand the unit on slope, intercepts, lines and the equations y = mx and y = mx + b. That’s pretty abstract stuff for some of my grade nine students, especially the ones who didn’t actually pass math in grade eight but because of social promotion are now in my grade nine math class.
It’s been a challenge all semester long to keep these kids engaged enough so they can learn. I feel as if I’ve been dancing as fast as I can. I have found using the LCD projector or even the overhead projector to teach the lesson and take up work useful. I don’t know exactly why kids pay more attention when my lesson is projected on a screen than written on the blackboard. Maybe the screen reminds them of of a video monitor? I don’t know why, but since it works I keep doing it. Has anyone else found this to be the case?
The last couple of days have been pretty hectic. I’ve been pushing my students to do their best, and to be honest, it’s exhausting. At the end of class today, I was beginning to think that maybe I was pushing myself too much, too. I had spent most of Saturday creating review material and most of Sunday refining the exam so that my students could demonstrate their learning to the best of their ability.
My husband, not a teacher, was watching all this and told me that I was handing my students their lessons on a silver platter. He felt I was doing too much. I told him that I wasn’t handing them their lessons on a silver platter. I was differentiating instruction. I thought that was funny. He didn’t. I guess it’s an inside joke.
Today at the end of class as I was gathering up my materials, just dying for a cup tea to sooth my throat, one of my students came over and told me something that had made all that work on the weekend and all those other weekends this semester worthwhile. He told me that he liked the way I taught because I made math easy. He had never found math easy before. If he didn’t get it, I would explain it in another way. I need to remember those words when I get discouraged or feel overwhelmed. Yes, making math easy takes a lot of work, but it is so rewarding. Now, for that cup of tea.