I always walk around the room when I lecture. It definitely helps with the inattentive students. My presence redirects the inattentive students behavior causing them to stay focused on me and where I am in the room. I also like to pass learning items around while lecturing to keep my students attention. They get to see and interact with the objects I am teaching them about. Does anyone have different or unique ways to keep their students focused when lecturing?

By giiving the students a deailed syllabus it gives then dates and expectations of the course ahead of them. Sometimes changes need to made to accomodate holidays etc - it is important to give a printed or onluine revised version so they can follow along clearly.

When dealing with students and home life I try make sure that the things on the top of my to do list come first whether it be for home or work. Tracy

We all truly do make mistakes. I have already identified some of the mistakes that I have made. I do try not to repeat them again. It is better to learn from a mistake then to keep repeating it. I do agree that humor can help smooth things over. I find it takes some of the "heat" off of the situation.

This is a difficult task. Sometimes you have to be creative in doing this. My best advice is to try different strategies. Continue to make sure that these students are learning. This often provides a learning tool for instructors as well.

When I come across a student who is not focusing I try to make sure they catch up to where we are at in the lecture. I may allow it to occur once, but if I see that it is a constant thing that is happening, I would pull the student aside and see what is going on that is making them not pay attention. We all have moments where we think of something that is going on either personally or even just thinking about a grocery store list. It's great for an instructor to have a room full of students who are excited to be there.

With every new class we encounter new challenges. I find it helpful to have several back-up plans for every part of the course that I am teaching. These plans are developed over time as you encounter many different groups of students. These should be written down until the different approaches and techniques become second nature to you. When one approach does not keep my students engaged or motivated, I can move seamlessly to plan-b or plan-c to keep the students involved.

I believe everyone deals with stress differently but one thing I think is very important in dealing with it is to not let stressfull situation "stew". I feel they should be dealt with as soon as they arise therefore creating a positive environment.

I feel it is part of life and one's needs to learn to deal with it in a positive manner.

I recently took my ADULT class on a field trip to see a movie. It was during class hours and was medically related to the course. Everyone drove themselves and we met in front of the theater. I believe they were drinking before I arrived, however, I have no proof. Also several of them "got up" in the middle of the movie and went to see the movie next door. I have only been teaching for 8 months and I am unsure how to address this.

Sometimes dealing with unruly or disruptive students can be very taxing and time consuming. I can usually tell after the first class who my disruptive students will be. It is often helpful to talk to these students ona one-on-one basis to try to come to some type of an understanding about these students and to try to find out why they are they are the way they are. It us often useful to give them small group projects to work on. I try to never let them take charge of a class and disrupt the class. I will pull them out and talk to them individually if need be.

When I look at testing & timing, I feel it is important to use different methods of evaluating because it not only helps me assess the "students more accurately" but also plays a direct role on time management.

I am a believer that creating "to do lists" and reviewing them on regular basis is an important aspect of managing one's time. I feel it helps me manage the class more effectively because I can prioritize and organize my students learning needs within given deadlines.

if you a positive person instead a negative person you will cut down your stress level a lots

get plenty of sleep

I find by keeping everything real by explaining how the classroom is operated is a real eye opener to our students. I always explain in detail how things are in the real workforce and what employers are looking when hiring new employees in the kitchen. I feel that it's imparative to lay down the law on day one while going into great detail on the expectations in the classroom. Glenn

I know this may not work for every type of class but each term I have been working on converting 1-2 tests to online format. I have found that even the essay tests are easier to grade and the students appreciate getting to type them instead of write them. Then, I develop a "best" answer in the feedback and if the student is missing something I can just give them the answer that I developed. I don't have to rewrite the same feedback for each student that got the same question incorrect. I love it! Colleen

Just curious about what people think about giving homework points for completion and not accuracy? I teach a fundamental mathematics class and I toy with how to correct homework each term. I feel that the homework (at least in this class) is a time for the students to learn and master the skills from the course objectives and I don’t want to take points away from them for trying to learn things. I only assign homework that they have the answers to so they can validate their understanding, I start each class and “Fix” whatever the class didn’t understand from the homework, and then every meeting the class takes a quiz over the objectives we learned from the previous class. I would compare this system to a professional athlete getting paid to practice. Ultimately the only thing that matters is that they win the game, but they are still required to practice and penalized when they don’t.

Just a heads up, if you allow soda bottles in class watch out for the labels, I've seen students pull off the label, scan to a computer program and type in a cheat sheet where the ingredients and nutritional facts are. Makes you wonder why they don't put this effort in to studying huh?

Under the section "Strategies" this topic states that the angry student will be almost exclusively male, I found this to be the exact opposite. Maybe this is because I come off as intimidating to male students, maybe this is the nature of my industry and those types of people it attracts but, my position is one that deals with problem students that get out of their instructors control I can say definitively that 95%+ of what I consider angry students are female. "(the pronoun "him" is being used here because hostile and angry students will almost exclusively be male)."