I find that students in the younger age group of 18-21 have an attention span of about 15-20 minutes for lecture time. I then start group activities or other activities to get them to stay on task.

In order to earn the respect and be a role model for students, it is important to take good care of your physical health which will in turn reduce everyday stress. Healthy food preperation, time to eat, stay hydrated and exersize regulary will give someone the strength to stop smoking and drinking. When you begin to feel the results, its amazing how much the stress level dissipates.

Years ago I exercised a lot and it really helps the stress decrease. I had gotten out of the habit but intend to start right away. I used to love the early morning around 5:30 am just as the sun is coming up and walking either fast miles at about 8:20 pace or long days about 10 min miles. Either way the stress was reduced in my life, I can’t wait to start again.

My students are older and thus have families and othe situations that deem for them to leave early. What can i do to negate this?

I love the concept mentioned about learning students' names. I pride myself in learning and remembering all of my students' names. I tell the the first day of class that I will learn all of their names by the second week of class and I stick to it. For those names that are difficult to pronounce or faces that are difficult to remember, it almost becomes a game between us to see hoe long it will take me before I actually get it right. Usually the students are impressed at how quickly I learn the names; and it makes me seem more real and human when I can't remember a couple.

I like the idea of the cards allowing students a limited amount of comments/questions. Some of the discussions in my classes go on much longer than I plan because every student wants to share their opinion or example of a situation. This will not only help w/the center stage students in limiting their reponses, but also with staing on track and schedule.

I will definitely use the paper airplanes as an ice-breaker and group selection tool. I usually have a group term project and have either allowed the students to pick their groups (which does not always produce the best work) or have selected them myself randomly. I also allow them to select a team captain (again, this isn't always the most effective since sometimes there are more than one natural leaders), or selected the captain myself if nobody volunteers (again, not effective because if nobody wants to lead and they are thrown into a leadership role, results are not always positive). This activity allows the students to be involved in the group selection, have fun during the process, and get comfortable with each other in a new way. I will post on my results.

As an instructor at a military university and former military member (28 years), I've found that categorizing stress can help one cope. Regardless of the "institutional stressors" (suspenses, workplace conflicts, lack of technological advantages, etc...), remembering that no one is shooting at you and you'll be going home at the end of the day to your family helps bring things into perspective.

The ability to quickly prioritize tasks and duties relating to specific job responsibilities is something that all instructors/managers need to develop and improve throughout their careers. The challenge to this skill is when tasks are added to our workloads (from inside or outside of our management chain)that have been deemed of a higher priority than our current responsibilites. While frustrating, integrating these "new" taskings into our schedule must be accomplished and requires an even higher development of priortization skill sets.

I view my students as potential employees that I may hire one day. So I treat them and teach them using that thought as a guideline for how best to educate them on everything they need to know from my classes to perform well in their career. I find that it makes it easier to communicate with them and help locate their areas of success and areas of improvement.

What is the best way to deal with students working in groups who refuse to participate but expect to get equal credit of the groups grade?

What is a good way to get the students involved with hands on activities for classes that are more lectured based?

Im in need of some suggestions for keeping large groups focused and engaged in what I am teaching them.

Learning to say no is hard for me. I always want to help when someone needs it, even it means stressing me out. Finding a good balance of things I have to do and things I would want to do is what I need to work on.

I come across a few times in my teaching career that we are covering materials that we have not done ourselves, but we need to instruct this information to the students. I research as much as I can and prepare an assignment that I can manage and instruct to the class and show that I do have some knowledge then none at all.

I find that the student cheats when they have not prepared for the test. They were present for the review and they had the knowledge that a test was to be given, but still did not want to try.

Trying to instruct students in class you will always come across a few students that know it or know more of the topic then you do. I always need a back-up plan with additional information that will again advance me over the students and the rest of the class to maintain my role as instructor in the class when the student at times wants to be looked upon.

I have students in my class that have a retention problem to read their skill books to prep for a text or even read up on what they are learning in the class.

it helped me to figure out why some students are the way they are and how to deal with it ,so that i can be a better instructor.it helps me ,and helps me to help my students better.

If I find that I am losing the attention of a student of students, I will pull out an Ice Breaker our something else that will catch their attention. It works!