In my opinion, managing your time in all aspects of life gives you a healthy mental and physical balance.

Think of mistakes as opportunities to learn. Many of the mistakes you will make will be unavoidable. However, there are some mistakes, common to beginning teachers, that are avoidable. What follows is a list of the mistakes that new teachers tend to make most often. Keep these in mind as you begin your new career. Mistake #1: You want your students to like you and therefore hesitate to discipline students accordingly. This is probably the most common mistake new teachers make. Believe it or not, students want boundaries. Let students know immediately what your rules or guidelines are and what the consequences are. Then, enforce them fairly, firmly, and consistently. Mistake #2: You avoid asking for help. Teaching can be an isolating experience. You enter your room, shut your door, and you are on your own—or so many new teachers think. Remember: Your best resources for help and advice are in the classrooms next door or down the hall. If your school does not provide you with a mentor-teacher, seek one out yourself. Beginning teachers need and deserve support and guidance. Mistake #3: You are constantly bringing school work home so that you have no leisure time at all. The first year of teaching is usually the hardest. Indeed, some veteran teachers say it was the hardest year of their lives. You feel unprepared, you have a mound of papers to grade, units to plan, parents to talk to . . . the list is endless. It is vital, however, to schedule time for yourself and your family. Take time to decompress occasionally.

Among current high school students, 75 percent admit to cheating on tests, homework, and other assignments. Fifty percent have cheated on exams during the past year, and 34 percent have cheated on more than one test. One out of every three students has used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment. Research indicates similar trends among college students and even graduate students. Students who are unprepared: These students generally are not chronic cheaters, but may be driven to cheat by unmanageable workloads or overbooked schedules. Students who do not see the relevance of assignments: Cheating is more likely among students who do not understand the point of an assignment, how it relates to them, or what they are meant to learn from it. Students who exhibit high self-confidence, cynicism, and lack of emotional expression: The combination of these three characteristics has been linked to cheating. These students may be chronic cheaters who feel entitled to good grades and do not see ethical problems with cheating. While these students are rare, they are present in all schools.

What do you do when a student: •undermines your authority, •leaves class repeatedly for bathroom breaks or to talk on the phone, •appears not to pay attention during class, •smells strongly of body odor, strong perfume or cigarette smoke, •is verbally or physically threatening to you, •practices annoying and/or disruptive behaviors, •monopolizes the conversation, •falls asleep in class, •is repeatedly tardy, •refuses to participate in class discussions or group work, •flirts with you, •shares or copies work, •submits a plagiarized paper, •sits in the back and chats with a classmate, or •is just plain disrespectful? A student might belittle the instructor or engage in a battle of the wills. This student should be privately told that his/her attitude was confrontational and asked how this might be resolved. Be careful not to read most questions about content, interpretation or assignments as a challenge of authority. Poor hygiene, too much perfume, cigarette odor or other strong odors can be distracting or even nauseating to students. The cause for the odor might be culturally-based in bathing preferences between cultures. This can be a real problem for some faculty members while others will never encounter the dilemma. I suggest letting the offending student know that in close quarters, some students have issues with strong smell. Verbal or physical threats are serious matters. As a general rule, consult professional experts for assistance immediately.

The course syllabus serves at least seven basic purposes (Rubin, 1985). Some of these directly serve your students and are readily apparent to them. The very process of writing a well-constructed syllabus forces you to crystallize, articulate, organize, and communicate your thoughts about a course. This thought and writing produces an enriched syllabus, which compels you to publicly reveal your previously well concealed assumptions.Your syllabus allows you to share your pedagogical philosophy. Students may not perceive it in quite this way, but that is one of the things you achieve through the syllabus. A syllabus tells your students whether you view learning as an active or passive process and whether you emphasize knowledge enhancement, skill building, or a combination of both.

Responding to changes has always been difficult, but more challenging at age 70. There is 29 hours a week at the old desk job sandwiched between traveling to teach up to 40 adults in three classrooms. Preparation has always been part of the coping strategy. I take advantage of the keyboards at three locations to get ready several days in advance. We kill many trees. I arrive at the classroom an hour before the students and lay out written support. I prepare the classroom and pull up any media resources. The students receive a greeting and know that we are available for individual concerns. A remaining source of stress are those few students who act out or fail to complete their assignments. Failure to confront the problem head on can mean increasing stress. Asking a supervisor for support is better than carrying the problem home.

I found this module very enlightening on a personal basis. Lately, financial worries have created a lot of stress for me which in turn has effected personal and professional relationships. This stress has caused sleeplessness, headaches and other assorted physical problems. It's also become a test on my sense of humor, which has helped me through many tough times. Physically, I continue to work out regularly and eat healthy but the financial stress wins out at times.

In grading papers, I find a great deal of Internet plagiarism. Sometime it is obvious as students cut and paste to produce an ungrammatical result. Sometimes I can Google a phrase from the paper and find the source. I sometimes check references as well. Most of these are very time consuming, however. What do most other teachers do in this circumstance?

I have several older ex-military students in my classes. I find it difficult teaching these folks (they are more serious, having already had one career) along side my just-out-of-high-school students who have little understanding of what it is to be in the working world and an entry-level employee.

What do you do when there is a standard syllabus developed and published by the school (online)? To what extent should you prepare supplementary materials to go with it?

I feel that in an adult classroom evniorment it is alot of a balancing act. Getting all age groups to form together is sometimes difficult, but listening to them and taking the time out to have the group get to know each other I have found is a tremendious help and more often than not, sets them up for success as a whole unit rather than a few individual successes.

I have caught two students cheating on a test by texting each other. I had them stay after class to talk to them they said they did so I had them sign a paper saying this and gave them a zero on the test and I had the hole class keep there phones in book bag's.

I have students from 19 years to 60 years old in the same class. Sometimes I put the older student with a younger one this helps out the younger one learn off of the older to be more ready for class buy seeing how his partner is ready for class.

I have seen cheating in many different forms. I have started giving different test versions which helps to control this situation somewhat.

I pray to deal with stress.

I have very limited stress. I have learned to manage my stress well.

I manage my time very well. I ensure that I prioritize my time based on deadlines.

All instructors should manage their time based on their priorities.

First let me admit that I am "experienced" in that I have been teaching for a while, long enough to remember a time before the internet was in our pockets! I am seeing a trend of more and more instructors connecting with students on social media such as Facebook. And frequently it is there that a line really becomes blurred. As such, I will not accept students as friends on Facebook even if they ask. Once they graduate and get into the profession I will happily accept. I wonder how many of the instructors who are participating in this forum do accepts those requests and how to they keep those between professionalism and friends from blurring. And/or do instructor create a separate and distinct page for true instruction?

I do like some of the suggestions. I would also like the course to discuss stress from management and poor supervisors