What does it take to get a personal committment of
belief and investments of interest, time and even treasure from students? Simply your personal committment of belief in yourself, your skills and your ability to communicate both. It's Show and Tell. Students and adult learners want to walk a mile in your shoes. My facility with a drawing pencil, my joy in its use, reflect on the student in a studio setting. The student wants to try to do what I do but that can only happen in a low preasure, rewarding first encounter with the medium. Initial success builds confidence, a desire for continuity of success and the personal committment to accomplish same. The student buys into fearless self-discovery.
This will be my 1st time teaching, so I have a lot of enthusiasm for the subject that I will share with my students. I'll be teaching an intro course that I know my students will be excited about, as it's their first hands-on skill class in the subject. I'll also be teaching a class that incorporates a brand new software program that the students will be required to use on the job. I'm a little apprehensive about my lack of knowledge with this new program, but I'll be familiarizing myself with the program before the class starts. I think if I tell my students that this is the newest program available and that they will be the first to use it, that will generate enthusiasm for the course. -Jeanne
The first day of class, I go around the room and ask students what their careers are. Since I teach writing skills, many students do not care to be there. As I discuss with each student his/her career choices, I ask them what in the world writing has to do with their chosen vocation. At first, many don't provide an answer;however, after asking them a few questions relative to the work (generally), they start beginning to understand that clear effective communication through the written word is vital.
I try to answer the question for the student: "So, what's in it for me?"
Usually, such an approach gets the students thinking and responding about the value of excellent writing skills.
Getting buy in from the students can be accomplished through their excitement in the class. If they are excited about the material, they want to learn it and make it part of their knowledge base.
If a student has a particular career goal in mind, it is the instructor's responsibility to align the course objectives to various real world applications. When the students can see how the material relates to various real world settings, they can personalize the material to their individual goals and become excited to learn more.
I get totally excited when I am discussing the course with students because i truely am enthusiastic about the field they have chosen. I talk to them about how good that profession has been to me in terms of steady, well paid, interesting work. Then I reassure this is the first step to getting there.
Hi Michael,
Students want to know how various concepts will apply in the workplace. When you can bring in the relevancy to the real world, students will buy it.
Patricia
We need to share examples.
Hi Michael,
You may want to try providing an explanation as to how that particular course will benefit them in the workplace.
Patricia
Hi William,
Great points made! As you have mentioned, as long as they know they can utilize the concept on the job, they automatically buy in.
Patricia
Hello Patricia,
I start out the class with a welcome and tell them why I chose to be a Certified Medical Assistant years ago and tell them a little about the success of other medical assistants and how it this can be a very rewarding career. They usually light up with smiles and I enjoy sharing with them and getting to hear why each of them have made the choice to come to college.
Well, I agree with all this in theory. I am looking for specifics on ways I can tie Culinary Students to 20th Century American Literature.
I am looking for the "how to." I have found that using multi-media in a multi-modal approach helps. If I can move seemlessly from lecture to PowerPoint to video, it seems to hold the engagement.
Relevance to real world applicability. Examples, etc.
Hi Rebecca,
Focus on how they can benefit from the knowledge learned in the course to utilize in the workplace.
Patricia
I have a little problem with the metaphor of trotting behind them. I am sure my "disagreement" is only in the metaphor.
I think the job is to model. They do not have to adapt your passions to appreciate the model. In Literature, I don't need the culinary students to love poetry or become poets any more than they need to like Thai cooking. However, I should give them a way to understanding and finding it, of seeing value in it, and understanding why others might find value in it.
I caution students of literature that, when I say, "What's it about?" that I mean "just what is going on here?" They shouldn't feel my content competence disallows their relationship to the item.
I find it is very helpful if you have students in a sequence of courses. For example, I may teach Developmental Reading and Writing, then, have those students again in College Composition, and, yet again, in 20th Century Literature.
The students set fear aside in first course, and we pursue common pursuits in the other courses. I don't have to re-load to secure additional buy-in. I can make some assumptions with energy.
In order to get buy in from my students I explain to them how the information and skills they will acquire in the classroom will help them on the job. I also make use of hand-outs that they will take back to their worksite and use on the job. As they can see that these hand-outs are useful, they usually are comfortable working through the lesson objectives and achieving expected behaviors. As long as the information being presented is relative to their job responsibilities, it is fairly easy to capture the students’ attention and engage them in the class. Also as a supplement to this approach, I use a Socratic interaction approach early on to get them engaged and talking, so that they feel like they are a part of the seminar.
I teach an academic course at a culinary school, and share that challenge. Showing students the "bigger picture" helps, but it is an uphill battle.
I have experienced that sincere passion for the subject matter gets your foot in the door, and depth of knowledge will be tested. Without the sound factual background you will never survive a class longer than an hour - the class will find out! But it has been my experience that the goal is to get the class moving on its own: it is far better to trot along behind a class, tossing out suggestions and guiding the path, then it is to pull a class through every meeting.
In Texas, compliance requires Gen Ed courses to shy away from application to career studies. They push us to a more Humanistic approach and away from career base.
Now, we do take some risks. For example, I have assigned a short restaurant review with the graded emphasis on use of vivid language. I have also done this with a short menu. If students choose a restaurant or culinary topic on their own for composition in other rhetorical modes, I don't stop them. However, we need to be in a position to defend this to compliance people.
