While I was a government employee (military and civilian) for the first fifty years of my adult life, and have been a freelance writer for the past twelve years, I’ve also been a teacher for most of that time as well. I began teaching in the late 1960s, in adult education programs on or near military bases where I was stationed.
I’ve also taught undergraduate and graduate courses at various schools where I lived, and am now teaching three online undergraduate courses in geopolitics.
One thing that has been a challenge for me throughout the years, whether I was teaching a class of recent high school graduates who were in the process of adapting to the newfound freedom of being college students or an adult education class with some students in their fifties who’d decided to finally get that degree they’d always wanted, is motivating students to achieve academic success.
This task is complicated by the fact that regardless of whether students are adjusting to being away from home for the first time, or being back in the classroom after a long time, they all experience a form of culture shock that tends to suppress motivation. In addition to imparting knowledge, a teacher’s responsibility is to provide that motivation.
Over the years, from colleagues and through trial and error, I’ve learned a few tricks, or if you will, best practices for lighting a fire under my students to make them want to learn.
One of the most important first things I’ve learned is to accept the students for ‘what they are,’ rather than what I wish they were. That means, for example, that many of the younger generation, who have grown up with computers, text messages, and the Internet, will not have the same writing skills and research methods that I was taught growing up in the pre-technology fifties.
They also lack a lot of the conversational skills I’m accustomed to. So, I take this into account from day one of class but being very explicit and simple with my expectations, providing them orally and in writing and repeating them periodically throughout the term.
With older students, the problem is their technical knowledge if often deficient and they have trouble with a lot of the IT-based instruction. Again, I address this issue up front, in non-technical terms, and repeat it frequently to remind them.
Old or young, another thing I’ve noticed is that people these days have a hard time following instructions, even relatively direct and simple instructions. Rather than criticize students the first time they fail to follow instructions, I point out where they went wrong. Subsequent failure gets penalized along with the reminder of the importance of following instructions. Seldom do I have to dock a student more than twice before the message gets through.
I also take the time to get to know each student as an individual, and while there are real limits as to just how much a teacher can tailor a class to each individual student, I do what I can, and structure my interactions with each student based on their unique circumstances. This is especially important for adult students who are often juggling the requirements of job and family with their academics.
I try to make each student understand that he or she is unique and is capable of far more than they might believe they are. I let them know that I expect a lot from them because I know they can do it. I find that people will, in most cases, live up to your expectations, or at a minimum make a heroic effort to do so. And, I reward the effort.
It works. Even with students who don’t quite make the grade, and fortunately, in my graduate courses, failing grades are rare, each student goes away feeling that he or she has given their best effort. In the end, that’s what really matters. | NWI
