Getting involved in active demo's helps me to better understand each student.

Since I teach a trade school I deal with several age groups and found that different regions of the country.

I like to use real life experience so the student understands the importance of the material. It also lets the students get to know you better.

I like to ask questions to the students that do not participate in discussions, so they feel more comfortable talking in class.

If you show respect to others, you get respect from others.

It can be difficult to use examples that everyone can relate to.

It is so important to share your education, history, and job history. Students want to feel connected and they like to hear their instructors give real world scenarios and examples as to how they made it in their career. At most community and career colleges, instructors are working full time in their field and students really find they can ask questions. This gets the discussion going and the motivating look like one day they want to accomplish their goals and dreams.

Keeping the focus on student achievement and goals is the outcome for any instructor. It is so important for students to understand the key elements in staying focused in class. This is achieved through the instructor giving insightful information that students will come to appreciate.

Student retention is a challenge in itself. I think that as an instructor, your role is to be involved, keep the discussion interesting, and focus on goal setting. What I like to do is have students share what their overall end goal is, not just to complete the course. There is long term and short term goals and so often students need to see short term goals to accomplish their long term goals. For the most part students do not even define what they want in a career. They are so focused on just getting through the classes. If there was some way to channel these students with positive thinking and motivation then maybe schools would have the opportunity to retain them in the long run.

One thing that I can say about each instructor is that we have all been there. Most of us have completed a bachelor’s degree and a lot of us have gone higher. It is so important to know that the frustrations that students feel are the same as when we were students. Now that as an instructor you know the level playing field, it is important to communicate with students on the issues they are facing. Once they hear that you have tips and tools for success and share your educational experience with them they are more likely to listen on how to overcome certain frustrations.

I have been teaching for fourteen years and I have worked on this area a lot the past few years. I am finding out the more one student knows about the other and their instructor to real life situations the more eager they are to learn and challenge one another. They also tend to want to come to class.

I have a student that needed some additional one on one instruction and professional development. Shortly after she became very clingy and began to share very personal issues. What suggestions does anyone have? I suspected she needed therapy, but I am not a Doctor.

always looke happy when your sad. staying on you toes. the students need your smile and motivation to push them to the end.

reminding youself that you succeeded as an instructor than you need to make sure that they also have a chance at it to. by staying focous on preparing them for success

The key to keeping Retention down is talk to student and see what you can do as an instructor to help the problem, and help to focus on the goals.

What are some effective ways at gauging student's unique fears or concerns at the very beginning of a course? Is it appropriate to ask students, either in class or on a written questionnaire, to express their personal anxieties about the course and their ability to succeed? And how can we go about addressing students' unique needs without granting them special allowances and without prying too much into their personal lives?

It is difficult to overestimate motivating or relating to students. In the first class it make sense to have pre-test to find out their level, adjust study plan, and to measure success of teaching process. How it may be used also to motivate students or help instructor to relate to students?

Even in career education we use the "Carrot" or "program completion" as the goal of learning. What if, at the end of each course / quarter/ semester our student would write a resume of additional skills they have because of the learning from the / quarter/ semester and then listed additional jobs they could apply for ... i.e. Maybe they can't be a hand on tech yet, but they could work a helpdesk ... As faculty we need to see that even one course in a program can give our learners a wider access to employment - even before program completion.

I have a specific case in one of the classes I teach where a student is frustrated because she feels she already took a course similar in nature at her previous college. She was angry and I could sense she wanted my help in solving this problem. I listed to the student's complaint; I said, "I can understand why you must feel frustrated; and I offered her the suggestion of discussing her feelings with someone in academics. Despite my discussion with the student, she has proceeded to show frustration with the course, and has voiced her objection to taking the course again. I keep saying something to the effect, "I can understand why you are frustrated, and I hope you can find value in some of the activities we do that are different from your previous class." Do you have any other suggestions for me as far as trying to help this student feel that she will, in fact, get something out of the course (even if is IS similar to another class she took) if she changes her outlook of the situation?

As the previous session noted, this writer tends to take the opportunity to gauge the varying levels of student skills, ages, time out of school, courses taken to date... such that all information is available to instructor to provide the best possible learning experience. This also allows the opportunity for others to get together as they may feel "they can relate to one another". It's a great start. I am sure to mention how important a support system is throughout our course.