What I have learned from my students

I have learned a number of things from my students this week and this past year. For one, they are caring, creative, and innovative beings. If given the opportunity to properly channel their energy and learning style they are quite productive. Various activities learned through NTI have helped me with this task. Students’ level of production drastically increases when given oral and written guidelines to perform tasks. Students work well in groups as long as activity objectives are clear, each person has a task and accountability of the finished product is distributed to all in the group. My students also do better when given defined resources to use and shown examples of what their finished products should look like. Even though I struggle sometimes with setting too many parameters, I find that it is best to have them in place. My students tend to feel more secure that their work is submitted with all components in place if they see a visual of one that is completed. At times, I have students who want to go outside “the box” on their projects. I have come to be open to their suggestions as long as they are appropriate for the learning topic.

Aside from daily learning activities, I realize that students need to be needed. They take ownership in the class not just by the work and projects they produce. They also partake in managing it, maintaining its cleanliness organizing materials used and recognizing fellow students as members of a class family. It is great to see the enthusiasm now exhibited by my students when it is time to clean up. Students even help one another in areas that they did not work in. They also like to share things special to them such as extra curricula activity invites and special days. We take time to remember birthdays by singing, passing around happy birthday bookmark cards signed by the class and teacher and being especially nice to that person for the class period.