David Thomas

In this past section they mention that they use the pronoun "him" as most angry and aggressive students are male. First of all, that is wrong - I don't know who wrote this article, but if I had to wager a guess, I would say that easily 70% of the angry/problem students I have had in the past few years have been women. Secondly, this is an unecessary sexist observation and, even if it were true - which I don't believe is the case - it is certainly not something I would slap into a document for educators. Oh -… >>>

Heather, I feel your pain - and that is something I think few teachers understand. We always felt sorry for those students who were struggling with family, work and other obligations, but still made the effort to come to a night class in bad weather, when they were not feeling well and when they had a lot of other stuff on their mind. I gave these people a lot of credit for going the extra mile. We figured the least we could do was to make our classes lively, keep upbeat (hey, there were days WE didn't want to come… >>>

When I started teaching in a small school in Berlin, the other teachers and I would always get up from our chairs in the break room right before classes started and yell, "It's showtime!" The idea was, our students were mostly adults who had just finished a long day at work, barely had time to eat dinner (if that), drove through traffic and were pretty tired, hungry and grumpy. Our job was to make them glad they made the effort to show up. We had enthusiasm, smiles, quick fun activities right off the bat and then jumped right into the… >>>