During this past semester, one thing I've observed, during "down time," is students' use of facebook. Now, when I say down time, I mean time which is used to work on projects or group assignments. Students who went on facebook were students who finished early! Well, my question is why did they finish early? How well is their work completed? If I've learned one thing during this past semester, NO MORE FACEBOOK! Also, no more use of computers in class, unless the use is for school work. I could not tell you how many times students, who used facebook alot, had late assignments or incomplete work. These students are more obliged to finishing their work quickly will ill-regard of proficiency. They just want to hop on facebook...

As a new instructor, having this element within your syllabus is key. I say this for a few reason. As a new instructor, if I did not provide this element early, students would walk all over me and use this to their advantage. For example, if they submit something late, they could come back to me and say, "it is was never outlined in the syllabus." I will have little room to talk and my report with students will be tarnished. This will reflect on my abilities as a teacher for semesters to come. And second, if this is noticed by students, some may take full advantage of this. They will not submit things on time because there are zero repurcussions.

Hi Dr. Read, I was once a procrastinator during my younger years. What a relief when I started to learn prioritizing my tasks. I eventually learned to organize my priorities and able to plan ahead of time. I realized things got better and I was less stressed. It made me more efficient in completing a task or tasks in a short amount of time. I carried this on to this day. Moreover, I also learned to anticipate possible tasks and "insert" this in my "to do list" or put the word "NOTE" at the bottom of my list as a reminder that the anticipated task/s may come up in the near future. This helps me organize my frame of mind, thus avoiding being "surprised" when this/these task/s come/s about. This helped me a lot in my personal life and at work. However, I am not sure whether this "anticipation" of tasks may be only appropriate to those people who are in the same workplace for a period of time and long enough to know the "ins and outs" of the company and people they are working with. However, it serves me well.

I have used ice breakers in the classroom numerous times. This has helped both new and returning students to get to know each other. One ice breaker I do is to have them split up in pairs, asking each other a few questions, such as Name, favorite vacation, favorite food, and one thing no one would ever guess about you. I always caveat it with that the answers need to be clean and nothing that would be uncomfortable sharing.

A healthy way I have learned to cope with the stress of every day life is walking. I put my tennis shoes on, and my ear buds in my ears and hit the ground walking. I have more energy, feel less stress, and overall....I am more healthy.

I let myself get stressed out because I have a hard time putting things off. I try to take on too much at one time. I hold a position as both instructor and administrative assistant and I have a hard time balancing both roles sometimes. It is true...stress can lead to illness. I've been there myself this year. I have found that making lists works, and prioritizing tasks is a MUST. You must also let the people around you know about the priority of their requests. If you have too much on your plate, you have to let people know.

I have found that it makes my life way easier if I have everything I need in a binder, ready to go. I have my lecture packets filled in and blank copies, that way I don't have to log into my computer every time I need something.

Procrastination is a fault of mine for sure. I teach in the morning and I play a role in administration in the afternoon. I tend to procrastinate with things like making copies for the next morning and grading papers because I simply play a different role in the second half of my day and when I take my instructor hat off, I tend to work on other things and find myself rushing in first thing in the morning to make copies. This doesn't always work out for me. There have been many times that the copier was occupied, or even broken down.

is a time frame to present the material to students, and those who do not ask question about the subject matter or do not understand a concept of subject taught.

Student instructor relation and respect is paramount for class succesful managemet.

By having all esting material available and key components of the answers your looking for, so scanning your answers is at hand.

Addressing the students complaints could minimize the same complaints from other students in the future.

Being a good listener is important to the students. They need to know that you will listen.

In the beginning a simple statement would start a huge class discussion among the students, at first I would say ok lets get back to work- After a few times I changed my statement to since we are all familiar with the topic lets go forward with a pop quiz for this section.This method has worked and now discussions are kept short and some students will say lets discuss this later before we get a pop quiz!!

These days, my stressors are many. Aside from personal life issues, I have been on unemployment for almost 2 years. I just started teaching at my career college in October. While I am thankful that I have a job, their pay scale, especially for someone who has a Masters degree such as myself, is well below what an accredited university would pay. I teach 3 classes a night, every night, and still do not make enough to come off of unemployment. As for finding a second job, I can't. Not for a lack of trying. Our economy is in such a state of disaster that employers are taking advantage. The competitive rate is now $10/hour and for those of us who live in cities like Los Angeles, that is impossible to live on. In addition to not being able to live on that wage, I get turned down for jobs anyway because I am too experienced considering I have an advanced degree. So, times are getting quite scary. I stress out often but when I get to work at night and teach, I become so calm. Even with the problem students. The frustrate me but I don't get stressed. I love teaching and I love that most of my students love to learn in my class. It calms me in so many ways and I am thankful that I have that outlet.

I teach at an institution where most all of our classes require students to be on their laptops and most likely online during class. This makes it very challenging to keep students on topic when the subject matter gets a bit dry. Even the best students seem to multi task when they are on a computer and almost always have open their email or Facebook on another window. Do you have any ideas for keeping students off of Facebook and other distracting sites during class time?

I have some students that are just plain lazy. They want everything handed to them. It seems the farther they get into the course they feel that we owe them what ever they need to get a good grade.

I've been a post it note person forever. I've adapted Evernote and Wunderlist to my daily routine and seen a vast improvement in not only time management but actually finishing lists instead of pushing them to another day. I use Evernote for lesson plans and grade sheets. I use my camera phone to shoot the white board at the end of each class and tag it for the course. Then I use these photo notes to improve my lesson plan. Wunderlist allows you to make categories and give tasks a due date or not. I have lists for work, home, family, groceries and so on. If I need something as simple as toilet paper, I put a due date on it. The nice part about Wunderlist is having it ability to only see what is due today...from any list. So you may have 5 items or 20 due on a certain day, but you don't have the distraction of seeing everything you have on your list for the next week month or longer all at once. The beauty of both of them is the "cloud". They are all sync'd to my phone, laptop and desktop so I can work anywhere. Stuck in line at the bank...fix a note.

How do you go about creating a neat and organized work area when the instructor you are sharing the space with is not cooperative or organized?

I show a hands on DVD and after 5 minutes students start to fall asleep.