Great comments Merle. In the business world this is called being fair but firm. Showing compassion as an instructor will assist in building great relationships with your students. Enforcing the rules fairly and evenly will gain you respect by your students. The difficult part can be when to be firm, fair, or compassionate. I have actually used end of course evaluations and surveys to collect data points on these from my students to get a more qualitative understanding of their perceptions of my teaching style. After reading and learning from such instruments, I make adjustments until I found a style that worked best for me and my students. Regards, James Jackson