Challenging our Students

We all know that students need to be challenged, but it can be a difficult task to figure out how to appropriately challenge each individual student. At the college level, there are a number of barriers to differentiating or individualizing instruction so that we are able to better challenge them.

One such barrier is that we do not have that much time with our students. Although the 18 week semester begins to feel like too much time as we reach final exams, in reality we do not have time to build a personal understanding of each student's learning style and academic needs. Yet, we constantly try to give our students the best educational experience possible because we believe in the power of education, and more importantly, we believe in our students. Whether you like to read current research or prefer to make observations in the classroom,it is faily well known that having a positive attitude with students leads to good student-teacher relationships, and those positive relationships help student acheivement. I'm not trying to suggest trying to be the "cool" teacher that lets things slide in class, or for you to be less academically rigorous. Actually, what I'm suggesting is the opposite.

Not all, but many serious students appreciate it when are tough on them, especially when we can give them a solid reason and make the difficult work purposeful. Getting students to understand the larger purpose of their studies can be a laborious task, but they should understand that individually they make decisions, such as doing well in a class, that ultimately affects our society.In addition, their performance is a direct reflection of their personal views about education, and those views are directly related to the views of their families, their communities, and their past teachers. This might seem a bit heavy handed at first, but sometimes students don't care about their education because they don't know why they should. Our time with them in the classroom is the perfect opportunity to help students explore the purpose of a good education, which means that we need to have purposeful lessons.

I don't claim to have all the answers, and many of my comments directly relate to the good teaching I see everyday, but we all need something to make us better teachers. Just like we expect our students to make the right decisions and look at the world analytically, we must do the same. Like our students, we are also going to make a few mistakes along the way because it is not easy to improve. Hopefully you are in an environment where it is alright to make mistakes as long as you are also willing to fix them for the good of your students and yourself.

Mobile Technology

I can just imagine the possibilities of utilizing mobile technologies for our classes. As a matter of fact, I'm writing this on my Blackberry right now. No disrespect to the mother to be, but I'm at a co-ed baby shower thinking about how to improve teaching, and Whamo! I'm blogging instead of playing baby shower games. What if our students could respond to journal prompts on a blog or check homework assignments from their phones?
Who can expand on this idea? Let's get some ideas going.
Michael

Links

I've added a few links to the page that might help out with some end of the year projects, or might give you some ideas for next fall.
The first is a link to Henry Aronson's blog "Adjunct Musings". Henry has some great wonderings, wandering, and ideas for lessons. I highly suggest checking out his stuff if you ever want some new ideas for your class.
The second link is to the National Center for Educational Statistics. I really like this site becasue it give a lot of data about education in general. If you have a question about something in education, this is a great place to go for data.
The third link is to the San Diego Imperial Valley Network for BSI instructors. Lisa Brewster, who is our regional coordinator, put this site together with the intention that instructors in our part of Southern California would have a place to get BSI related information.
I hope these will be valuable tools for you. Let me know if you have any links you would like to be shared with others on this page.

Michael Wickert