Ask-Dr-Kirk

How To Handle Disrespectful Students

Michael Linsin has an interesting post on how to handle disrespectful students. As he notes, "One of the biggest classroom management mistakes teachers make is that they take disrespectful behavior personally."

I have to admit I struggle with this sometimes myself. The key as he says is to simply follow your class policies and enforce whatever consequences you have pre-determined and to do so calmly and dispassionately. He goes on to say:

Enforcing your classroom rules—which should include a rule specifically for disrespectful behavior—with an attitude of indifference strengthens your authority and your classroom management effectiveness.

This can be a challenge at times because initially, as a jolt of adrenaline surges through your body, it can make you feel like somehow the student won, that he or she got away without knowing how their disrespect made you feel. But a student only wins when they’re able to get under your skin...Rest assured, you’re not folding or giving in by resisting the urge to react emotionally. Rather, your constraint is a model for your students for how to handle negative situations with poise and without lowering yourself to the same level of disrespect.

You can read his entire post here

Tips On Using Twitter In The Classroom

If you've been wondering how to use Twitter with your students, check out those resources:

50 Ways to use Twitter in the College Classroom

Another method would be to have your students follow CEOs who use Twitter

And check out the Top 100 Twitters in Academia. Yep, that's me on that list!

How To Learn Student Names Quickly

As many of us begin teaching in the new semester this week, here are resources to help you learn your students' names.

Dr. Natalie Houston (University of Houston) shares her suggestions here at the Prof. Hacker weblog.

Professor Rhett Allain blogs at Dot Physics and has a tip here.

Other tips here that I have shared in the past.

Remembering names is a skill but it is one that can be learned and is obviously important to our students. Have a great semester everyone!

Celebrating My 28th Year of Teaching

As I start my 28th year of teaching, I came across this poem by Billy Collins (U.S. Poet Laureate 2001-2003). It seems appropriate...

                Schoolsville

Glancing over my shoulder at the past,
I realize the number of students I have taught
is enough to populate a small town.

I can see it nestled in a paper landscape,
chalk dust flurrying down in winter,
nights dark as a blackboard.

The population ages but never graduates.
On hot afternoons they sweat the final in the park
and when it's cold they shiver around stoves
reading disorganized essays out loud.
A bell rings on the hour and everybody zigzags
into the streets with their books.

I forgot all their last names first and their
first names last in alphabetical order.
But the boy who always had his hand up
is an alderman and owns the haberdashery.
The girl who signed her papers in lipstick
leans against the drugstore, smoking,
brushing her hair like a machine.

Their grades are sewn into their clothes
like references to Hawthorne.
The A's stroll along with other A's.
The D's honk whenever they pass another D.

All the creative-writing students recline
on the courthouse lawn and play the lute.
Wherever they go, they form a big circle.

Needless to say, I am the mayor.
I live in the white colonial at Maple and Main.
I rarely leave the house. The car deflates
in the driveway. Vines twirl around the porch swing.

Once in a while a student knocks on the door
with a term paper fifteen years late
or a question about Yeats or double-spacing.
And sometimes one will appear in a windowpane
to watch me lecturing the wallpaper,
quizzing the chandelier, reprimanding the air.

Billy Collins from his book, Sailing Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. 

Using Word Clouds As Teaching Tool

I had my students do a word cloud as an icebreaker for the first day of my graduate class this semester. Afterwards, they brainstormed how word clouds could be used in organizations. They developed a great list:

• Have employees share what they see as their personality traits
• Method to share anonymous suggestions
• Method to share suggestions for improvement
• Employee evaluations
• Set goals of employees or departments
• Brainstorming activity
• Determine strengths and weaknesses (SWOT analysis?)
• Indirect method to give a direct message
• Show appreciation
• Inspirational signs
• Mission statement
• Agenda for weekly meetings
• Describe new product
• Sales presentation
• Retirement (give to employee leaving)
• Bring group together/build cohesion
• Ice breaker with new team members
• Look at big picture of a project
• Establish relationships/bonding of employees/teams
• Recognize accomplishment/celebrations
• Identify staff conflict issues
• Prioritization
• To do list
• Staff training
• More in-depth/informal look at what’s important to employees

NOTE: Free software for doing Word clouds can be found at:  http://www.wordle.net/

Is Social Media A Fad?

I showed this short video on the growth of social media to my graduate students in Leadership Concepts on Saturday.

Some highlights:

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers…96% of them have joined a social network
• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations; Only 14% trust advertisements
• In the near future we will no longer search for  products and service. They will find us via social media

I'm teaching my students how to use social media as a tool in organizations...

Special Price On Book On Teaching

TIBERIUS PUBLICATIONS has a special quantity discount on my book, Taking Back the Classroom: Tips for the College Professor on Becoming a More Effective Teacher. The price is as low as $18 for 10 or more books if ordered by September 15, 2009. You can access the order form here:

Download TAKING BACK THE CLASSROOM Summer special

Just in time for the new academic year!

Advice On Publishing

As I rewrite/revise a paper recently rejected by a journal (after seven months under review), I found this article by Rob Weir at InsideHigherEd useful. He gives some great advice on getting academic articles published.

You should prepare numerous works and send them to multiple outlets in your field. Most journals demand exclusive rights merely to consider an article and if they reject it, you have to start over from square one. Going through the peer review process at three journals can easily consume a few years. Get several works into the cycle ASAP or your tenure decision will arrive before any of your work sees the light of day.

I would agree. It also makes that one rejection easier to take if you know you still have a couple other things under review.

Teaching That Sticks: Read This Before Beginning The New Semester!

Chip and Dan Heath discuss the basics of making ideas stick in their book, Made to Stick. In this article, they show us how to use the same techniques to helping your students remember what they are learning in class. Great advice on how to structure your lectures and class examples.

10 Tips To Setting Expectations On The First Day Of Class

Research shows that people make assumptions about our credibility, professionalism, and sincerity within a few seconds of meeting us for the first time.  This emphasis on first impressions translates to the classroom as well.  How you conduct the first day sets the tone for the rest of the semester.  Our job as faculty is to establish our expectations as well as “sell our class” to the students in order to create a learning community.  Here are ten tips on how to do this:

1. Decide on your policies and expectations for the class.  Determine what you are willing to enforce for the semester and communicate these on the syllabus and in person.  “Behavior that is rewarded tends to be repeated.”  Be sure that you don’t reward inappropriate behavior by ignoring it or by not enforcing your own policies.

2. Think about what to wear and how you want your students to address you.  Impression management counts.

3. Sell your class.  You want your students to be excited about the course content.  Probably best not to give the syllabus and leave.  Also, don’t just lecture on Chapter 1.  What activity can you do that will give them a feel for the class and make them want to come back?

4. Establish your credibility.  Share information about your past experiences.  Tell stories. 

5. Explain why you decided to go into teaching.  Show your enthusiasm for the class.  Tell them why you like teaching this particular course.  This helps the students to see you as a person, not just their professor.

6. Find out about your students.  Ask questions about majors, past work experiences, where they are from...Start learning their names.  Don’t use the excuse that you’re not good at learning names.  You are expecting them to learn your material.  It’s only fair that we also show that we can learn something that might be difficult for us.

7. Illustrate what you will be doing the rest of the semester.  If you will be using cases, do a short case the first day.  If you will use teams, then do a team exercise.

8. Give an assignment that is due the next class period.  This could be a short paper, a reading (build in some type of accountability such as a quiz), math problems, or internet research.  Take up and grade (does not have to be many points but this illustrates your expectations that the students will do the work assigned). Don't accept late papers in order to encourage your students to turn assignments in on time-a good skill to have!

9. Get student feedback.  Do a one minute paper at end of class.  Ask them what other questions about the course they have.

10. Have fun!

For more tips on teaching and classroom management, check out my book, Taking Back the Classroom: Tips for the College Professor on how to be a More Effective Teacher.  You can order now through Amazon, or Barnes & Noble College Bookstores.