- Soft skills have never been my strong suit, in fact I am uncomfortabele around strangers. I admire glad handers who have the inate ability to never have met a stranger just a friend they aren't aquainted with yet. Yet I love teraching. Somehow its different when I'm in front of a class room. I think because I had difficulty learning that I truely respect anyone who voluntarily enters the classroom to learn. Respect for your students will go a long way to making up for any short comings you have with meeting strangers. I also beleive and tell them from the begining that we are all in this together and that it's gong to take all of us for any of us to be successful and if we work together to help everyone be sucessfull then we will achieve that goal for each of us. Respect for the person and the effort that is being made will keep you from falling into many a sink hole in the class room.

I think next to respect is honesty. I'm not sure which takes precidence but you really need to have both to be successful in the classroom. You do not have to be cruel in your honesty but you must have principles and stick to them. I let my students know the very first day what will make me angry (man's inhumanity to man) and what my expectations are for them. I requier erspect for each other and myself and compassion for all. Truthfully laying it all out on day one written, verbal, and visually for them, leaves them with no uncertainty of how the class is going to run and that everyone will be treated according to the same rules.

I am not my students friend but I am friendly and they know I honestly want them to be successful even when I flunk them becuase theya aren't ready for the nest step in the program. It is better for them to fail with me and get a firmer foundation on which to build than to progress with a half built foundation and nothing to build on. I want them to be successful in life not just my ourse and they respect me for that even when theya re upset at failing.