What Students Want From Their Teachers

I recently read this article by Alan Blankstein, who is the President of the HOPE Foundation. In this article, he discusses the importance of believing in the potential success of all students, and never giving up on even the most challenging student. However, what I found most interesting were the results of the various surveys and focus groups that have been conducted to find out what students really want from their teachers.

Based on these surveys and focus groups, here’s what students ask of their teachers:
1. Be prepared and organized. Even low-performing students don’t like to lose instructional time (Ferguson, 2002; Haycock, 2001). They like and need organization, as well as a high-demand/high-support environment.
2. Make teaching relevant. This is particularly true of students who don’t see college as their future. These students need the highest-caliber relationships with and level of instruction from teachers. These are the students who challenge us to the highest level of professionalism.
3. Show them how to do it. Students with greater needs require engaging curriculum, structures of support, and pedagogies that meet their specific needs. Assigning homework to students who have not yet mastered the knowledge on which the homework is based is unfair. Those students whose parents can crack the “homework mystery” will do fine, but the students who need support most will not.
4. Don’t give up! Too often, in the rush to cover material, teachers feel compelled to move on before all students understand it. This is like the bus driver who pulls into the station late, complaining that he would have been on time “if it weren’t for all those darn passengers.” Indeed, students are passengers not to be left behind.