Barry Westling

Irina, We all have strengths and unique personalities, but we all can exercise just being open and demonstrate a willingness to help our students. Barry Westling

Michael, Yep, we don't want surprises. And there's really no reason that a student should not know whart expectatations and achievements have occurred in a class at any given moment. Sharing graded information quicly is a courtesy all students deserve. From that information, they can plan, and we can add our advice and support. A teacher never givers a grade, the student earns it. But we should do all we can to inform them where they stand. Barry Westling

Irina, Right! I think setting our stance that we care, are real in relating to students, try to be approachable, make classes interesting, and treat students with courtesey and fairly, contributes to improved trust and respect. When we earn that, students are more likely to follow our directives and fulfill our expectations. We can help them, help us lead them. Barry Westling

Fonda, I like rubrics too. Grading needs to assure we are measuring learning, not just giving points in categories. However those categories are derived, a good rubric can give the best hope for objectivity in the grading process. Barry Westling

Deward, You're right. I don't think we should minimize the force our words of encouragement and support have when shared sincerely and in a caring way. So, frequent and early on grade updates along with kind words can help convey the teacher cares about the students success. Barry Westling

Michael, Boy, there's all kinds of uses including assessing teacher performance, aligning grading to standard criteria, making improvements to curriculum, and getting feedback on activity effectiveness. Of course for students, we can design brief or comprehensive assessments; the idea here is to see where the greater emphasis or topics should occur (or not occur). Barry Westling

Deward, I agree and have done this very action myself. At first, I just wanted to show progress made. But I've learned that students also feel quite motivated and inspiraed by seeing firsthand how far they've come. Barry Westling

Deward, Very true. These days,there is so much good media choices available, we have to be very selective in what we choose for these students, in this class, on this day. It may be completely different from the same topic delivered in a previous class, but our goal is to choose the media that conveys our message ond information for our current students. Barry Westling

Debby, Right. Organization helps both teacher and student stay focused on the needed objectives. It's easy to get distracted, and sometimes deviating from the topic is OK, but without a systematic plan, things can get out of control, to the misfortune of of the students learning outcomes. Barry Westling

James, Great5. I use pretesting selectively, not all the time. Mostly when I'm unsure about where the students I have are performing or their collective prior knowledge, a quick, short assessment touching on what I'm about to teach them gives me an idea about the degree of emphasis I need to provide. Barry Westling