Many of the instructors at the school where I work employ the portable file folder system that stores and organizes syllabus material, hand outs, workshops and other materials that we can keep in our trunks. This is a great way stay organized on the fly.

In an attempt to be more organized and productive, I find myself scheduling tasks and appointments that bookend against each other, leaving no time to 'decompress' or relax until I get home at 11pm. I've tried to schedule breaks and downtime, but inevitably, I have to use that time to; 1. catch up on the work i did not finish, 2. spend with family, or 3. work more hours. I can't seem to get on top of it. any suggestions?

I find it challengng at times to keep things organized the way i would like because where i teach, we share classrooms and don't have offices or any type of personal space. This means that our teaching tools and papers stay in the classrooms. When you have three instructors sharing the same class, things get changed, moved, and shuffled and it can get very frustrating. I have found the only way to help the situation is constant communication with your teaching team. Making sure everyone knows who's responsibility it is to clean what and when seems to keep things the way we all like them and ease a bit if the frusration from not having very much personal space.

It's often difficult for me to find a balance between these two. I find myself usually doing things right away and if i get stressed out, i put things off and ruber band between the two extremes. I have found that making lists and journals of things to do and prioritizing has made quite the difference and I seem to be building a balance in the last few months.

How do you motivate the unenthused student?

I have found that there are people who work better with noise/loud music, etc and others that need quiet. How do you balance these out in a classroom?

In my class I had a student that just could not keep up with the expectations no matter how I tried to help or encourage and I felt helpless.

The number of steps and the amount of explanation should be no more than is needed to make the hard call with managing student behavior.

First you must bulid respect with students and you will gain the same.

Small groups work well when dealing with unprepared students also centerstage students altho a strategy intervention may not contain all of the features planned the blaming become less

You must manage your students or they will rule the classroom.

It is so often hard to control that one student who never stops talking...great advice!

Syllabus are a great way for the student to identify with your structure.

Setting the stage by addressing a common but inportant existing problem that student encountering in their setting also readdressing syllabus steps as needed when handling late and missed assignments

It can be hard to have a truthful conversation with a student who might be unhappy but displays passive aggressive behaviors.

I have run into several students that feel the need to over share their life story with me. Often times this happens outside of class discussions, on breaks or after class. More times than not they are stories of hardship, heart break, trauma in their lives. I want to be empathetic, but at the same time I don't really know what to do with the information, or why they are sharing so much of their life with me. I am a tender heart but want to have strong boundaries.

I am finding that as an intructor, I'm getting more and more difficult students in the classroom. The more suggestions I get on handling these situation which can be disruptive is good.

The information is very helpful. I will admit that some of these suggestions I have alredy applied in my classroom and they do work.

I think insecurity is often related to perfectionism. I recently had a problem keeping up with my workload when I started a graduate degree at the same time I was starting a new job. My desire to do both perfectly was getting in the way of me meeting deadlines. Finally I decided that the only way of being successful at both activities would be to identify what HAD TO GET DONE and not be concerned with how I wanted to do it. A friend who is a very accomplished academic recently said to me that what I did was figure out that “the best paper is a done paper”.

Everyone in every situatiopn is lookong for expectations. This is important from something as basic as driving a car to running a major department in an organization.