Teaching Today publishes innovative teaching tips on a weekly basis. Written with the busy teacher in mind, each tip is concise, practical and easy to implement in the classroom right away. Topics covered in Teaching Today are classroom management, career development, high stakes testing, instruction and planning, parental involvement, reading in the content areas, using technology in the classroom, and portfolio development. Teaching Today also offers free weekly downloads that correspond to the tips. Our free downloads make implementing the teaching tips even easier. Teaching Today provides educational resources for teachers looking for everyday solutions to the challenges of the classroom.
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Teaching Today - This Week's Tips Teaching Today - This Week's Tips

This Week's Topic

Raising Adult Learners' Self-esteem
Many adults have waited years to complete their education, and their self-esteem and confidence may need a boost. This week’s Teaching Tips focus on ways to boost your students’ self-esteem and confidence.

This Week's Tips

Easy Ways to Raise Students' Self-esteem (Monday)
Many adults who return to college do so after a change in their lives or because they realize they need a degree to get to the next level at the workplace. Your students’ self-esteem may be lower because of the changes in their lives or because they don’t feel prepared for the promotion they want. Remember this tip to help raise their self-esteem: Treat each student with respect, even those who are doing poorly in class.

Change Poor Choices to Good Choices (Tuesday)
Your students may have made poor choices in business and in relationships. If so, they have been undermining their real contribution to life. To help them make better choices, use the context of your course material to boost self-esteem in the following ways: Avoid rating questions and comments. If you rate one student’s questions as good, you are by default rating all other questions as being not as good.

Praise Students for Their Courage (Wednesday)
It took a lot of courage for your adult students to return to the classroom. This alone deserves to be recognized by you, their instructor. At the beginning of the course, honor your students’ courage by telling them you are aware that it may have been a difficult decision to return to college. Congratulate students for their courage. Find something in each student’s work to praise during the course.

Give Students the Opportunity to Buy into Learning (Thursday)
Design your course with flexibility to allow adult learners to own their learning process. Within the context of the course material, allow students to create some part of their learning. Here are a few tips: Have students choose their own topics for presentations or speeches. Provide class time for students to discuss the material among themselves. Encourage students to relate the material to their own lives. Have them reflect this in their projects and papers.

Let Students Teach You (Friday)
Good instructors learn from their students while their students are learning from them. Give students an opportunity to help you improve their self-esteem. Have students fill out this week’s Download Depot, which helps them to evaluate how you are treating them. Use this evaluation a few weeks into the course, and consider modifying your instructional style based on students' comments.

Download your free Instructor Evaluation today!




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