This site is a class blog space for new Career and Technical Specializations and Heathcare Science teachers enrolled in the New Teacher Institute (NTI) at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
My Best Advice
The best piece of advice I can give a new teacher is build relationships with as many students as possible. In the last two years, I've heard the importance of the 3 Rs about 1,000,000,001 times. Rigor, relevance, and relationships. I teach at a school with students who are labeled as "at-risk". In my opinion and my experience, the relationships have been the most important for me and for the students and should be listed before rigor and relevance. Forming relationships have enabled me to expand from just teaching healthcare science to teaching real-world life lessons. Teachers should be personable, approachable, and friendly to students. In many cases, we are the only one's they have to depend on, trust, lean on, turn to, and look up to.
Yes the 3 R's - overkill to us all. I agree that relationship building is very important. As teachers we find ourselves so busy trying to stay afloat that we do not take time to get to really know our students. I am guilty because my job is so demanding - time is very limited. I do try to get to know something personal about my students in order to build a relationship with them. I am a work in progress as far as student relationship building goes. Good post Pamela - we all need to work on this skill.
ReplyDeletePamela, you are so correct. If you don't build a relationship of mutual respect between you and the students, you could be the best teacher in the world and they will tune you out. It's hard but worth it.
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