Things I have learned..................

"The most important thing I've learned about my students in the past term/year is . . . that the students like struture and having someone to listen to them. Many of the students that I have this semester came to me the first semester of the school year and I have noticed that the struture of the course that was presented to them in the beginning of the year the students still abide by this and question me if we tend to go off our routine. Students function better and tend to work better when they have consistency in the structure of there class.I also have found that students LOVE to have someone to listen to them. I think I have such a good and trusting relationship with many of my students because I allow them to express themselves, I noticed that with this they tend to take things more serious and work harder at handling the responsibilities of the class. This also makes them work harder, this year alone I have so many students to volunteer to stay after school to help with functions, industry certification and FCCLA. I have been really amazed at the dedication of the students. With this I have several parents that have called asking me to talk to there child because they know that the child enjoy talking to me. In doing this the students bring me a weekly report of the progress in class....just this week alone I had a teacher come talk to me concerning a student, the student and I talked and came up with a solution for the problem. Each day before going into that teachers class he brings me his cell phone to hold until the end of class. The teacher was amazed at the attention span of the student since doing this, the teacher also stated that it was impressing at how taking away a cell phone can change a student. As a parent I know that this is one of the MAJOR distractions of our kids, they tend to loose focus. I used this same technique with my 16 year old son, that's how I knew it would work.......(smile)