What I've learned....

The most important thing I've learned this year is..... Well, that no matter how strick I've been, or how easy going, my students tell me I'm the coolest teacher ever! I would say, each year that I have taught, I've gone at it with a different attitude and better expectations of myself. I've learned that if I talk to my students as adults and treat them with the same respect that I would like to receive in return, that I get more out of them. My Skills USA students stay after school to finish up cars that were not completed during the day. One time I was working on my own vehicle, and needed to be somewhere after school, and two students rushed in after the bell rang to finish it with me. It was awesome! I've also learned that saying something as simple as, "how was your weekend?" goes a lot further than what I expected. Sometimes students unload on me how their weekends were terrible or that they had a great weekend. I've had a few students tell me that I'm the only teacher that listens to them. One student just needed to vent about an argument with his girlfriend and was pleeding for someone to just listen. I've noticed that students react better towards me if I'm having a bad day, if I've previously listened to something they had to say in the past. My students, are still students, but they are growing adults, and everyone needs someone to talk to sometime.