In the Navy, in business and in the classroom, one's initial appearance is important as a first step in commanding respect. Good grooming is a given. Then, I favor wearing a suit (or sport jacket and well pressed slacks), clean shirt (of course!),tie and shined shoes. Comments from my students show that my appearance helps them to decide that I am a professional. During demonstrations, the jacket comes off, the sleeves are folled up, and I project interest and excitement about the project.

Eyes rolling, yawning or sighing in class is an indication I am losing the class. I switch gears and have class interaction by way or hands on, debates or rolls playing. Energizes the class, problem solved.

I find cheating is a reaction and not an action. Due to lack of time, study habits, sleep or deadline, students are forced to make the hard choice to cheat. To prevent this, I have all things off desk, every other seat and pen only. When the correcting is done, any below a 75, warrants a visit/call to discuss low performance. Then the solution can begin.

being prepared and confident in your material prevents this.Always present as if someone above you in your field is in the class, but having this in the back of your mind, you will always be prepared!

I had a student once who was very slow. She shuffled, dragging a big load behind her, consisting of a backpack, a dufflebag on wheels, and an armful of books. She came prepared to spend the day at school because her transportation depended on others. Anytime she entered the classroom, usually late, she disrupted it because of the slowness and the noise of unpacking everything, sorting through papers, and generally "getting ready" for the class that had been in progress already for 10 minutes. At break time, I sometimes had to go and find her because she was not back in time. How would you deal with this?

I find that when I have personal stress issues at work. It helps me to have a close friend at work to talk with. Giving me New perpectives of the situation at hand.

I started off trying to be flexible and understanding and found that I was flexing too much. This caused a lot of stress for me. If you accept late homework, you will receive a wave of late work at the end of the quarter. I have tried making the penalties stiffer and stiffer until I actually saw some results. I tried 10% penalty for late homework (little impact), then tried 50% penalty (that made a difference). In some classes I do not accept late homework at all (this way, we can grade the homework together in class). There is complaining (once or twice) and then they realize that they need to be prompt - so 90% of the students are on time with 90% of their homework. I also don't do make-up tests. Period. (Well, if your father is in the hospital, or you are in the hospital/jail, we will talk about it. Other than that, you just get a zero for that test/quiz.) This may sound harsh, but it is working for me. I usually do only one make-up exam all quarter in all classes combined! I tell students that if they are late to the airport (whether a good excuse or bad excuse) the plane will leave without them. They get it. This has reduced some of the end of quarter grading stress that I was experiencing.

If a students give an Instructor a good commrnt on his teaching,recognize the comment,because the student could be sincere,and not just trying to better his grade...

As a top notch twenty-five year professional, I believe communication and the way you are dressed makes and important statement about you. I address my students with a surname [to show respect] and I encourage and open learning environment for them to learn. My appearance shows my sincere intentions in acheiving excellence from them and me. My lectures and hands on work re-inforces this committment on my part.

Eye contact is very important to make with a student. It shows a sign of respect that goes both ways and helps to manage a classroom to it best potential. Students need to be reassured all is good. Eye contact helps in this way and we need to do this daily. If you ignore a student, then that is disrespectful and iritates another human being being. So watch yourself!

To instruct my classes, I take the role of class monitor and guide very seriously. It's a lot of fun to interact with my students to exchange new ideas and old ones that still hold up. I balance the way I speak to my students by asking one person from each side of the room to share their experience and observations. This works wonders.

On day one for all of my classes, I give my students a prospectus, course outline, and textbook checklist. These are used to communicate the goals and aspirations of what we want to do in our class. It keeps everyone on their toes to learn. After teaching over 7 years, I have never had any problems with my students with excuses for not finishing thier homework or turning projects in on time. This has served me well.

When a student feels more involved with his/her education it will motivate them to take ownership of the process....

How do you engage with students who allow their negative attitudes towards you affect their class participation?

I find that when i write things down on the white board, it helps the class accomplish their activities.

I find that I have different levelsof stress. 1. Being that I am not familar with the course. 2. Not having taught the course. 3. Feeling that I will not be very successful with student. Did ii get the information across. Then there is my outside personal stress. Relationships of family,friends,health,money etc.

I find that when I am organized and have all my ducks in a row, my class runs much smoother. I feel less stressed and the students seem to follow suit. They grasp the lesson more efficently.

One of the challenges that I face is how to engage the class. I try very hard to get down to their level and pull them into whatever activity that I’m doing. There are some common rules that I follow that I would like to share. Bring the activity into the real world. One of my pet peeves as a student was busy work. If I’m doing an assignment that I know (or think) it was only given to fill time, I’m not a happy camper. Bring the assignment into the real world by playing the role of the boss and giving the new “worker” an assignment related to the job. Example: “Today we are going to learn how to do pivot tables. Just to give you an idea of why this will help you down the road; it will take a massive amount of data and analysis it 100 different ways in seconds. If you work for a car dealership and your boss asks you to dig up a large amount of marketing data for a new sales approach, you can! Take all the buying data in the database pop it in a pivot table and it can start to tell you some interesting things.” This goes a long way to an adult student when you introduce the idea of a real world application to the project at hand.

How can you make a new class at ease when you where just told about a class that you have to teach the night before. How can you handle this as you are trying to prepare for the class? The department head gives us a syllabus but, we do not have the proper time to get materials together.

I teach math. I was perplexed that students couldn't compute the percentage that they scored (after all, it is a math class). So, I made everything a round number. Every homework assignment is worth 10 points. When I had 19 sections of homework (this matched the number of sections in the textbook), I threw in one "freebie" so I would have 20*10 = 200 points. It makes it easier for the students to track (and me too).