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Ask a question from your peers to help you in your professional work. Seek different points of view on a topic that interests you. Start a thought-provoking conversation about a hot, current topic. Encourage your peers to join you in the discussion, and feel free to facilitate the discussion. As a community of educators, all members of the Career Ed Lounge are empowered to act as a discussion facilitator to help us all learn from each other.

Stress

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.

Big time saver

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

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.

Stressing me out

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.

Class Management

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

Saving time

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

student complaints

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

Student communication

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

Managing the class

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!!

Teaching calms me

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.

Facebook

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?

Lazy Students

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.

Linked Apps

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.

difficulty with shared office space

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?

Keeping alert

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

Students managing home life and school wrk.

One of the biggest compliants i receive from students is the struggle they go through to manage school wrk and their home life.

common mistakes

common mistakes by instructors are they get too comfortable with the students, and become too friendly to them. That interferes with them trying to keep their perspective straight.

managing students

Managing your students takes alot of patience and understanding.

challenging students

Dealing with a challenged student, takes a lot of patient and working one on one with them!

sucess

Success is measured by how hard you work to get your goals achieved!