In business, the 80/20 rule states that 20% or your clients will expend the resources it takes to support the other 80%. In other words, 20% of your clients will be needy, while the other 80% will be on autopilot.
With teaching, one would be thrilled to have 80% on autopilot.
Imagine if! Continue reading
The Textbooks dilemma: are they for teaching or learning?A student told me today that he prefers a certain teacher over the others because that teacher doesn’t use a textbook.
Wow, that’s cool, I say.
“So why do your other teachers use textbooks?”
“I have no idea.”
“And what do you learn from them?”
“I have no idea.” Continue reading
Building up the house: in-school student oversight with Gabriella CarboneStudent Success Podcast No. 20, Sept 4, 2014 (recorded July 11, 2014)
Today’s Guest: Gabriella Carbone.
In this interview, Gabriella discusses her Academic Coaching work with high school student athletes during the 2013/14 school year. Focusing on athletes, Gabriella helped them track work, build executive function and interpersonal skills. She served as their counselor, mentor, advocate and friend. Continue reading
Liddy Allee-Coyle on teaching as a two-way street: the power of honesty & respect for studentsStudent Success Podcast No. 18, Mar. 19, 2014
Today’s Guest: Liddy Allee-Coyle, Master Teacher, Ithica City School District
In this interview, Liddy discusses her work as a teacher coach to champion the student-first classroom in which students have trust with their teachers and their learning and “choice, relevancy, and a reason” for learning.
As Liddy says, “Every kid wants to know why… if we answer that ‘why’ we get more buy-in.” Liddy’s ideal of relevancy for students is learning any lesson as practice for further learning and not necessarily that particular lesson, “to be life-long learners.” Continue reading
In this case, the procrastination isn’t delay, it’s not wanting to put up with annoying instructions, details, and steps.
If,
Procrastination is harmful deferment of an aversive task
(translation: putting off something we don’t want to do and getting burned by it later)
then, if you’re skipping instructions in order to finish more quickly and it leads to a lower grade, you’re procrastinating. Continue reading
Scaffolding students out of procrastination: teacher interview with Mike CahirStudent Success Podcast No. 16
Feb. 10, 2014, recorded Feb 8, 2014
Today’s Guest: Mike Cahir, Teacher and Department Chair, English Department, Archbishop Carroll High School, Washington, DC
In this interview, Mike rejoins us to discuss procrastination from the point of view of a high school teacher. I ask him about his take on procrastination, and then I review some of the ideas that we are learning from Dr. Pychyl of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University. Mike processes this new information through delivers his own experiences and offers ideas and advice for both students and teachers. Continue reading
Bribery?Maybe, but flattery will work better. Seriously.
The highest and most effective form of teacher flattery is asking a teacher for help. The next highest is actually doing your work. You meet teacher expectations, you get an A. Easy enough.
Well, let’s start from there, anyway. So what do teachers really want? And how can the student figure that out? Continue reading
Is online tutoring & digital learning really going to work?Fluff or substance? Revolution or fad? Where is online tutoring and digital learning going to take us?
When I was in K-12 school in the 1970s, mostly, education was being turned over. The students had no idea, as it was just happening to us. But what is education today was largely defined by the research, theories, experiments, and, mostly, fads of that period. Continue reading
Heh, students, here’s a little inside information you should know: teachers are people, too. Shocking, I know. But true.
When my daughter was in my school, I’d bring her along to the watering hole we teachers escaped to on Fridays. She’d sit at a nearby table and enjoy bar food and a soda. After a few weeks she started inviting friends from school to sit with her, which seemed fine — until I learned that what she was doing was bringing her friends to listen to us do what teachers do on a Friday: complain about our students. “Oh my God,” my daughter told me, “I didn’t realize that teachers have a life!”
Yep, and like you, they complain a lot. Make that all the time.
Your teachers are actually more than a toaster that spits out lectures, homework, and grades. If they were machines, we’d could sure use better engineers. Actually, thank God they’re not all the same model.
Instead, we’ve got a different personality, a different mood, and a different perspective in every classroom. Some we like, some we don’t, some are good, some not so much. All of them, however, set our grades, so we’d better be careful about who we’re blaming for what. We hear it all the time, “That teacher is soooo boring!” You know the routine, and you also know you can’t change classes just because you don’t like the teacher.
You can blame the teacher all day long, but it’s still up to you to do the work, figure out what the teacher wants, and do well on the tests. The best students can do all that and still hate the teacher. Annoying, yes, but a lot more productive than to do poorly because you don’t like the teacher.
But we can do a few simple, little things, meanwhile.
If the purpose of the teacher is to give you a grade, and your not getting the grade you want, then, truly, it’s up to you and not the teacher. So what can you do?
A first step is to get the teacher on your side. You do it with simple, easy salesmanship. Your teacher is your education provider, and your job is to get the highest grade possible out of each teacher. If what you’re doing is not working out, then let’s figure out a couple easy strategies to get that teacher on your side:
These are simple human interactions. The best salesperson doesn’t care who or what the client is, and just focuses on the sale. Your sale is your grade. Focus on it. Worry about it, not your teacher. Your best sales tool is communication. You will get out of your relationship with your teacher exactly what you put into it. The more you become a partner to the classroom, the more likely your teacher will perceive you as a partner to him or herself personally. Then you got ’em.
As with any relationship, honesty, kindness, and care will work with these fellow human beings we call teachers. Ultimately, teachers have a job to do, and it will guide their decisions and grades more than anything else. But if you can perceive them as individuals who are trying to do their best, but who have flaws and ticks and their own ways of being and doing things, maybe you will open up a new opportunity for yourself.
Think of how you are with those teachers you like and respect, and how beneficial that relationship can be for you. Then, maybe you can do that with the rest of them, and get similar, positive results.
– Michael
The A+ Club from School4Schools.com LLC, based in Arlington, VA, is dedicated to helping students across the U.S.A. meet their goals and find the academic success the want and deserve. Contact us here or call now to (703) 271-5334 to see how we can help.
No B.S. from J.P.: what makes a good teacher?Student Success Podcast No. 8, Nov. 13, 2013
Today’s Guest: J.P. Cassagnol
Now that he’s about to graduate from college, JP discusses his experiences in K-12 and college and how it all fits together to make him the student and person he is. J.P. cuts through the B.S. with excellent critiques of his K-8 and 9th-12 Catholic education, and what worked, what didn’t and, most importantly, what makes a great teacher. In J.P.’s case, those teachers are Brother Martin and Prof. Carlander, teachers who inspired, pushed, and turned JP into a real student with real learning.
An important challenge J.P. brings to education is his K-8 experience, which he found entirely lacking once he came upon Brother Martin’s 9th grade Honors English class. Are we underserving our K-8 children? And what of those kids who didn’t get into Brother Martin’s class?
Subscribe to Student Success Podcast RSSGuest Biography
J.P. Cassignol is a senior at Salisbury University, Eastern Shore, MD, with a concentration in History. J.P. Graduated from St. John’s College High School in Washington, D.C., and prior to that was enrolled in a Catholic school K-8 program. J.P. loves history and literature, and he works as a tutor in those and other subjects.
Topics Discussed
Resources
Credits
Host: Michael L. Bromley
Original Music by Christopher Bromley (copyright 2011, 2013)
Background snoring: by Stella
Best Dogs Ever: by Puck & Stella
Here for Puck & Stella slideshow
The A+ Club from School4Schools.com LLC, based in Arlington, VA, is dedicated to helping students across the U.S.A. meet their goals and find the academic success the want and deserve. Contact us here or call now to (703) 271-5334 to see how we can help.
