For the past week or so, I’ve been writing about five strategies for developing stronger r
elationships with learners:
All five strategies are written up in one article published in the ELMO Review. (Click on the image.)
Any thoughts on these strategies as a whole? What’s your most useful strategy or habit for building strong relationships with adult learners?
If you’re trying to have a more equal relationship with students, refusing to give advice is the best policy. Here’s my advice about giving advice to adult literacy, adult basic education or GED learners.
Watch the video, from Literacy Nova Scotia’s collection of videos called The Teaching Toolbox.
This is the last of five strategies for developing stronger relationships with learners. See also “Listen,” “Yes Means Yes,” “Make Your Teaching Transparent,” and “Say How You Feel.”
(You will find all five written up here.)
Like most of us I can’t hide my feelings. They show on my face, or in the set of my shoulders, or the sweaty palm prints I leave on the desk or table. Most students (like anybody else) will assume that my feelings have something to do with them. Here’s an example:
I’m in the middle of teaching and the student asks me to explain something again. (He still doesn’t get it after the third time.) I’m about to start the explanation when I notice the clock and suddenly remember that I have to cut this session short for an emergency meeting about a crisis in the program.
All my feelings about the meeting come over me–worry, wonder, anger, confusion, etc. These feelings show on my face or in my body–tight lips, far-away look, and hunched shoulders. Continue reading
Much of our work is invisible to adult learners in literacy, Basic Education or GED programs. At worst, they see us as people who know everything and get paid well for showing up for short days and short years and bossing them around.
At best, they think we’re wonderful people who have all the answers and are helpful and patient and don’t do anything between sessions with them. Continue reading
“I’ve been writing poetry since I was 13, and I’ve got a big binder with all my poems in it. Would you mark them for me?”
Over the years, those were the two sentences I most hated to hear from a student. I dreaded reading the poems, because I expected them to be really bad poetry, and depressing. I was always right on both counts. Continue reading
There is no better way to show respect to a student than to listen. If you listen, learners will teach you how to teach them.
If you listen, you’ll be surprised. And when you’re surprised, you’re not bored. That’s a good thing if you’ve been doing this job for a long time. Continue reading
I learned a lot about how to give learning a physical component from the late Christina Patterson. I had always been good at using manipulatives, getting people moving and so on, but Christina pushed physicality to a new level for me.
One year, near the beginning of term, she took a whole class to the local archery club for a morning of lessons from the club pro, followed by lunch.
When they all got back to the classroom, Christina got the discussion started with “What did you learn about hitting a target?” and made a list as students talked. Continue reading
They come because they have to.
Any of these people may have mandated students to your adult education class: the judge or their parole officer; their lawyer, hoping to make a good impression at a sentencing hearing; their social worker, financial aid worker, workers’ compensation officer, or other professional with the power to deny their request for benefits; parents who say if they want to live at home they have to go to school.
Unlike other students in your class, they are not self motivated; their motivation comes from someone outside the class, someone you have little influence on. Continue reading
How to say “No” to your teacher introduces students to a seven-step process for saying “No,” gives them some practice using prepared scripts based on common situations, and then assigns them the task of saying “No” to each other, and to me, at least once in the following week. (Detailed lesson plan, with scripts, here)
The steps are surprisingly simple to articulate: Continue reading
As August slips by, I’m reminded of activities that start the new year, which I put under the heading of “How to manage your teacher,” an essential skill for every student, at whatever level.
One year I asked my department head, the inimitable Vicki Noonan, to help me with an experiment. I said I couldn’t give her any details, but would she come in and give a presentation to my adult literacy class Continue reading
Working in Adult Literacy 