Winfried Dressler writes
>Paul Rousseau wrote:
>
>>I have been teaching at a community college for over 25 years and a long
>>time ago I realized that students learn in spite of me...and the only
>>thing I could really do to influence what they learn is to make whatever
>>I'm teaching attractive enough that they pay attention.
>
>"Make my teaching attractive" - please share some of your collected
>know-how on this, like successes and failures, what worked, what not. Do
>you suspect some valid generalisations in your findings?
1. Look like you take care of yourself, physically and mentally.
2. Expect a lot from your students
3. Find out the social codes (signs and symbols) used by your students
and frame your content in them, This may mean learning a bit about music
styles, names, and so on. This does not mean 'becoming the learner'.
They will pick up on that game and beat you at it every time. Just
demonstrate that you are willing to go into their world and they will feel
a bit more willing to enter into yours.
4. Whatever you teach, make sure there is an immediate payoff. Instant
gratification is still important for the younger student. I teach
communication and I ask my students (ages 19-24 on average) if they might
be interested in meeting more people to go out (party) with. The response
in always "YES" and then I teach them basic rapport building skilss
(matching behaviour) and they come back to class with success stories.
I don't know if the aforementioned are generalizations. They work for me
and perhaps will trigger some ideas in others.
Of course, I don't think I want to go too far with this particular
discussion (as I look at the
subject line...Our Founding Discipline). Thank you for asking.
=========================
Paul Rousseau
roussea@server.uwindsor.ca
St. Clair Beach, Ontario
Interested in Creativity? Contact the Creative Education Foundation
1 800-447-2774 or <cefhq@cef-cpsi.org> WWW: http://www.cef-cpsi.org/
Tell them Rousseau sent you.
--Paul Rousseau <roussea@server.uwindsor.ca>
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