Month: July 2011

Creating an Active and Exciting Learning Environment

At some point, we all have been students—even though some have never received formal education.  Although some topics in every subject area cannot always be the most exciting topics to engage students with, teachers can find meaningful ways to engender an active, engaged, responsive, and fun classroom for their students—no matter if one teaches at the Pre-K – 12 or college level.  No one wants to be bored!  If you’re a teacher, you need to make it a serious priority for the majority of your lessons to include opportunities to have fun with your students.  Don’t let your classroom become more boring than watching paint dry.

Give your students opportunities to speak during your class.  The teacher shouldn’t be the only person who talks the entire class period.  Teachers, if you discover that you’re doing all of the talking in your classroom for more than 15 minutes at a time, then it should trigger in your mind that you need to get your students involved in your topic or topics of discussion immediately.  No one wants to listen to you talk forever and ever—your voice is not that attractive.  Some teachers like to talk the whole period.  Even if you’re discussing some highly complicated issues in your class, still don’t find yourself doing the majority of the speaking in your classroom.  It’s understandable for you to need to do the majority of the speaking in your classroom sometimes, but you shouldn’t make it a habit.

Did you have teachers at any level of the educational pipeline who would do all of the speaking in the classroom most of the time?

If you desire to have an active classroom where all of your students are engaged, then you cannot do all of the speaking.  Even if you’re a phenomenal speaker/lecturer, you need to offer your students opportunities to speak and participate in what you’re discussing.  Never forget that you’re not speaking to desks—there are living human beings occupying those desks.  If you want to be a good or great teacher, you must have an authentic concern for how your students perceive your teaching and classroom.  In no way does this mean you have to allow your students to solely determine how you teach and conduct your classroom.  However, the input of your students should be valued, especially if you claim to have a commitment to serving them.

You may think you’re such a great teacher, but if your students are bored out of their mind, you’re not going to reach them.  If you allow this to be the case, you can simply forget about how great of a teacher you think you are—the students will tune you out and focus on how many minutes they have left before they can leave your classroom. (Can you picture them counting down the minutes now?)  Don’t allow this type of relationship to develop between you and your students.  You don’t have to become friends with your students, but you should at least engage with them at some significant level.

A good or great teacher loves to listen to others.  Some people don’t ever want to listen to what you have to say—they’d rather just listen to themselves talk.  Academic instruction suffers when teachers only want to hear their voices.

Beyonce knows how vital listening is, which is ostensible through her song, “Listen.”  When you listen to her song, one of the dominant messages the song unveils is through listening to others you will gain greater insights about their innermost emotions and thoughts.

If your classroom is not an engaging and fun classroom, then you need to make changes to the way you operate it.  This might mean that you need to make significant changes.  Don’t get so consumed by your routine that you care more about the routine than the students who the routine is supposed to serve.  You may find that having a routine could be the very reason why your classroom is uninspiring.

Take some time to think about your classroom and the way you manage it to develop ways to ameliorate it.  Invest some time in ways to engage your students and increase participation.  You may find that you need to move yourself more out of the way to accomplish this.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Don’t Forget to Have Fun

Although many people across America have a significant amount of daily responsibilities, you must find some time to have fun.  Don’t get so busy that you forget that you have a life outside of those things that have you so busy and involved.  Make time each day to engage with something that’s totally unrelated to your daily responsibilities to just have fun—even if it’s just for a brief moment.  You will be amazed at what just a brief moment of fun each day can do for you to release some of the stress that accompanies being very busy.  While one can understand that the things that have you very busy can be things that you enjoy and allow you to have fun, you need to take some separate time away from those things to devote completely to having fun.

Some people have not allowed themselves to experience the fullness that life has to offer.  It’s okay to be adventurous sometimes.  Go out and experience life.  Do something that you’ve never done before.  Don’t get so consumed by your routine that you think that you’re truly living a full life through your routine.  You can be a serious and professional person and still have a significant amount of fun.

Never take yourself too seriously.

You don’t have to pretend to have fun.  Do you know people who will sit up and create lies about things they supposedly have done and/or are doing to make you think they are having fun?  Even when some people have told you that they did not have fun doing something, they will post messages on Facebook and Twitter about how they had and/or are having fun.  Why lie about something like this?  It seems that there are some deeper problems and challenges that people are struggling with that will cause them to resort to telling lies about something like this.

Although it’s vital to find time to have fun, you must understand that you shouldn’t dedicate so much of your time to having fun that you don’t take care of serious responsibilities.  For example, you should not spend so much of your money having fun that you end up not having enough money to pay your rent or car note.  Be responsible about how you have fun.  Some people are always having fun and not doing the important things that they should be doing.

Just because you devote most of your time to having fun does not mean that your life is any better than the person who is only able to invest a more modest amount of time to having fun.  Many people use Facebook to post pictures and location notifications to try to present themselves as people who are “living the life”—when in actuality they are not as happy and not as financially stable as they are attempting to advertise.  Now, in no way does the previous statement try to suggest that all people who post pictures and location notifications about the places they go to and the things they do are posturing—the previous statement just offers an assertion that many people are guilty of doing this.

You can live a fun and responsible life.  If you’re living a fun and responsible life, continue to enjoy your life.  If you’re not living a fun and responsible life, do yourself a favor by starting to live a fun and responsible life.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Sometimes It’s Best to Ignore People

When you know that you’re not going to be able to give a nice response back to something someone has said, then it may be best to ignore him or her.  People can really work your nerves sometimes, so just try to ignore many of the things people do intentionally and unintentionally to get on your nerves.  Sometimes people will get out of their place and try to get all in your business.  Now, one has the option to respond to nosy individuals in harsh ways or one can elect to say nothing to them at all.  There comes a time when you will not be able to hold back from going off on nosy people, and they need going off on many times, but you will find that you will affect those nosy people in greater ways by ignoring them.  How so?  Nosy people don’t like to be ignored.  They become frustrated, angry, restless, and etc.—things that simply going off on them will not necessarily be able to produce.  You’ll be the one who wins when you engender these emotions from nosy people.

Respect people’s privacy!  If people don’t have a desire to share something with you, then you shouldn’t be looking for them to share that something with you.  You certainly shouldn’t be feeling like they owe it to you to share their personal business with you.  Now, when a person usually shares almost everything with you and responds to almost everything you say, then it can be a little surprising to experience him or her not willing to divulge information to you.  However, when there are those certain moments when a tremendously open and transparent person doesn’t want to reveal things to others, then he or she shouldn’t be criticized for not being forthcoming.  Everything is not for you to know and everything is not for everyone to reveal, especially not publicly.  People can be so selfish and think that you should just promulgate all of your business to them for it to circulate in the public domain.

For you nosy people, have you ever considered that people might not want to unveil certain information to you because it could be a matter of safety?

What drives people to want to know everything about everybody’s personal business?

If nosy people would invest more time concentrating on their own business, then they might be much better people and they might make greater progress on pursuing their own goals.  Often if nosy people would just wait a little longer, people will disclose the information that they want to know.  What’s more interesting to learn, however, is what does learning the personal business of others do for nosy people?  Nosy people should go out and make their own news, live out their own dreams, and pursue their own interests and stop devoting their time to worrying about learning about what’s going on with other people’s private business.

When you don’t want to share private information or any other information with others, then don’t feel compelled to offer it.  Some moments and information must remain private—no matter how open and transparent a person you are.  Yes, you can be open and transparent but don’t be a fool!

People reveal personal information to you when they feel comfortable divulging that information.  Therefore, you may learn a significant amount about people’s comfort level with you when they are unwilling to disclose personal information to you.

Start pressing the “ignore button” more on your phone and metaphorically in your interactions off of the phone with nosy people.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison