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Ask a question from your peers to help you in your professional work. Seek different points of view on a topic that interests you. Start a thought-provoking conversation about a hot, current topic. Encourage your peers to join you in the discussion, and feel free to facilitate the discussion. As a community of educators, all members of the Career Ed Lounge are empowered to act as a discussion facilitator to help us all learn from each other.

make clear expectations

best way to make it clear the expectations of your students?

motivation of students

how do you get them excited?

Loving what you do.

I am a first time teacher. I believe that my students can honestly tell that I love the profession I am teaching about. I also believe that it gives me creditability with the students when it comes to the "not so fun stuff" in the classroom.

Induction in teaching

Induction promotes active learning by incouraging inovative learning.

Expository learning

Is the most popular metod of teaching in science classes.

Collaboration in teaching

Collaboration in teaching promotes an atmosphere of relaxed learning and prepares studends for a more open communication.

Cultural Influences in Student Motivation

Some cultures place much less value on education. This can influence their own attitudes as well as their significant others/social support system.

Students REALLY liking the instructor...

I started instructing at my career institute here a couple of days ago, and I really enjoy it! The problem is, I already have female students who are attracted to my appearance, and they are not even in the program I instruct! So... what do I do? How do I handle being in this situation? How can I avoid this situation in a professional way?

Questioning Techniques

One method that seems to work to spur in class questioning is to have students write down any questions they have about the material covered in the lesson, and then collect it. Review the questions and bring them in to the next class. You can organize the questions into related topics or stepping stones, and share the questions (whether anonymously or by name - depends on the class and student) and ask students to demonstrate or discuss answers to the questions. This is a nice informal assessment of student learning, and a way to bring students into a discussion.

Who has what learning style.

I'm a medical assistant instructor. Each one of my lab classes has several skills/competency tests that my students must complete, such as giving an injection, drawing blood, taking a patients temperature, etc. These are all hands on techniques. I went around the room yesterday, and asked 13 students what their "learning style" was. Every single student said, hands on/kinesthetic! It got me thinking, do people with different learning styles become drawn to a particular career field, as my medical students are all hands on learners, and are all choosing a career with lots of pt care. Thoughts?

Helping students with disabilates.

When helping students with disabilates I always give them more time to get their progects finished. I will usualy give them more help than the other students.

Contact Info

I am wondering how many teachers give their e-mail addresses out to students? I would like to be accessible, but are there any inherent risks or things to be concerned about? Also, I really like the idea of quizzing the students before the class to get an idea of what they know coming in.

Role playing

I teach veterinary technician courses - and one of them I teach is a office procedures course - since this class doesn't directly deal with animals - it can be a challenge to keep students interested. So what I like to do is a brief lecture about a topic and then involve the students by having them role play - I will have them act out a situation since we are talking about situations that deal with clients. Gets the students involved and they have fun with it.

Icebreakers for first class

Not only do I go over the syllabus, course outcomes, policies, etc. I also try to do some sort of an icebreak just to loosen up the students and have a little fun at the same time. Things I've done are - 2 truths and a lie - where the student tells everyone 2 truths and one lie about themselves and everyone needs to try to figure out which one is the lie - scavenger hunt - where they have to go around talking to their classmates to find certain things such as (1) Someone who has a brother - (2) Someone who has never traveled outside our state, etc. I've also done things like ask a question to students to answer as they introduce themselves - if they could travel anywhere - where would they go and why. This tends to spark some discussion and get discussion going.

Outline

I think it's important to have an outline of materials that I want to cover in each class - I encourage open discussion in my classes - and sometimes although we talk about topics related to what we are educating students in - it may be off from what we are talking about that day in class - therefore having that outline helps me be sure that I am presenting all necessary material and not missing things which are important for students to learn. Students seem to appreciate that as well - since they then feel well prepared.

Attendance and Professionalism

Although students are in a teaching environment - it is important for them to also treat their education as a "job". Employers want employees who are professional and reliable. I feel strongly about enocuraging and guiding students in this regard - so they will be viewed as a candidate for a position they may apply for and not overlooked.

Disabilities On line

Detecting learning disabilities in an on line is a challenge. I found, to detect a disability it takes an average of reading two assignments. From this, one could detect a problem. However, it is difficult to determine the type of disability. I am asking has any one found a better method to detect and assist online students with learning disabilities.

Communicating

With my students who are in some form of the arts and in an arts program, visuals must play an important part of the learning process. The "word" is linear, while the image opens different connections in their brain and relates more directly with their patterns of learning.

learning groups

i teach in a kitchen and most of the work is done in groups. each group will have menu to do and a time in which it must be done the does keep them focus

New Instructor

I have recently started at a career college as an instructor. I feel as though I am slowly getting the hang of things but I am starting to have some student issues. I have a student faling my class and have called him/her in to talk about what is going on and how I can help. The response I got was "I am just not motivated to come to class or do my homework." To me this says this person just doesn't care. I have tried numerous things to get them to attend class only to be disappointed when they don't come or don't do the homework. I know I can't "save them all" but in a way I feel as if this is a failure on my part. Is there anything else I can do?