Christa Daugherty

From reading this section on compliance, I find one piece missing: how responsible are schools for assessing a student's readiness for post-secondary study? If schools admit students who clearly don't have the necessary skills, is there accountability for that?

I've found that the more I can make my examples funny or goofy, the more students will remember and use them. For instance, when I explain the vocabulary word "ostracize," I tell my class to picture Oswald the Ostracized Ostrich who is excluded by the other birds because. I'm AMAZED at how many people remember such a silly example! Plus, the alliteration in the example makes it more catchy and thereby memorable.

Something I had to learn in my early years as a teacher was that I needed to not focus on the trouble that students were causing me but to focus on the trouble they were encountering in their lives, both in and out of the classroom. Yes, it's painful when students make our lives more difficult, but we are there to serve their academic and personal growth needs, not the other way around. So a little mental shift helped me get my attitude right and help my students more effectively.