Showing success to students
The career school that I teach at operates on a wheel principle. Every three months we get a new group of starts. We go from basic electricity to advanced wiring for HVAC/R.
Most students come through with little or no prior experience wiring anything. After a few weeks of hard-work and the learning of a lot of foreign information, I reveal to the new students that their lab partner that they have been paired up with was a new start three months ago just like them. I find it really helps to build a community learning environment, and also is a huge motivator to make students strive for excellence. Not saying that I don't come across that hard to reach student. And I do. Sometimes this helps them as well.
Hi Alan,
Students like getting confirmation from current students to reassure them that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Patricia Scales
I take a similar approach at the school I teach at, we teach audio engineering and when the students first start signal flow through a console they get flustered but I always bring students who are later in the program and show them that they were in the same boat as them at some point. As well I tell them how I struggled through the same process as a graduate of the school I teach at.
