Empowerment
Above all, students need to be treated w/ respect. Empowering students to make an informed decision should be the practice for all professionals when working w/ student in Higher Education. Students are to always be encouraged to make their own decisions whether or not we the professional agrees with that decision. We can certainly advise them in what is in their best interest. However the decision needs to be their own and we should not be pressuring them. After all they are adults and will be making critical decisions in the professional experiences. We need to teach stduents independence and stop enabling them to be dependent. Students need to make mistakes so that they can learn & grow. They need to help themselves up when they fall. There is a big world out there and only the strong will survive. Students should be pushed to be the best they can be, to their fullest potential.
I couldn't agree more. I have had instances where students didn't respect one another. I had one class that every time a certain student spoke, I saw other student's rolling their eyes or laughing. Of course, I addressed but now I address it on the very first night. I bring it up for discussion and let everyone know that respecting fellow students is a must in my classroom. I rarely see this type of behavior any more.
You had me at respect...I didn't need to read much more. I work with a pack of educational dinosaurs who show so little respect to our students partly because that is the nature of the trade we are in, novice really have to take a lot of lumps. It is difficult to get some of the instructors to realize they are not on a work site, and that the students are not their employees. There are some serious authority issues at my institution, very needlessly heavy handed and not at all polite. My program director is widely disliked by the students, mostly because of how he comports himself. It is a seem because he really does just want to help, but he came to education late in life and has brought a lot of old fashion ideas with him that don't really sync well with our student population. C'est la vie.
