May 2001

What's the most important thing teachers can do for their students?
(Submitted by FACCC member Charles Lunt)

Your responses will be posted here as received, and may be used in other FACCC publications.

Please e-mail responses to Communications Director Katherine Martinez, k7martinez@aol.com, by May 31 (use the subject "May Question").

Answers received: 

• Your answer could be here
• car100@earthlink.net—I have often pondered this question during my thirty-five years of teaching high school and college, and holding positions as dean, department chair and president of a university and have come to the following conclusion. The most important thing a teacher can do for students is: to be accessible to them and available for them. By "accessible " I mean, being open to listen to them at all times regardless of the content of their concerns with an open mind and with a willingness to change positions when appropriate: to respect their feelings and accept the validity of their concerns without reservations within a context of being non-judgmental and maintaining strict confidentiality of these concerns. And above all, be grateful for the rare opportunity to be chosen by the student as a adult worthy of their trust. Being accessible is to be there for the student when the student needs us, any time, all the time.—Carrol W. Waymon
• RLand@dccd.cc.ca.us—The most important thing for any teacher is to educate the mind and motivate the soul of every student. Education is the essence of life, and stagnation is the death of creative ideas. Rita Ramirez Dean-Land, Professor of Reading, College of the Desert
• consueloc@juno.com—The most important thing that teachers can do for students, particularly community college students, is to teach them to become self-regulated learners. Motivation and Learning Strategies for Self Regulated Learning is a great book on this subject for all teachers committed to successful student learning.—Consuelo Rey, East Los Angeles College
• SmithD13@aol.com—The most important thing a teacher can do for a student is to create classroom relationships based on respectful communications. Learn each other's names, use them in classroom dialog, create group activities, facilitate interactive learning, and celebrate everyone's successes. No matter what the subject may be, a classroom environment characterized by humane interpersonal communication is one of the most important things a teacher can contribute toward their students' success.—Dennis Smith, Accounting Professor, Sacramento City College
• FACCCPres@aol.com—The most important way a teacher helps students is by providing them with the tools to learn how to learn on their own.—Carolyn Russell
• allyjoye@pacbell.net—One of the most important things a teacher can do for her/his students is to teach them how to be responsible for their own success as a college student. That includes explaining expectations at the beginning of the semester, setting deadlines, and sticking to those deadlines.—Ally Joye, American River College, ESL
• luntcc@earthlink.net—Instill "interest in THEMSELVES" that relates to the importance of their subject matter...We tend to learn more when interested or "hungry for knowledge" when we are at least interested. That would equate to "a reason for learning," and the importance of giving our time spent in school as truly,valuable.

  Let me put this in a less philosophic manner. I think the most important thing a teacher/instructor can do is to create an interest for the student! (After that, everything is very easy to accomplish).—C. Lunt, Professor, Construction Technologies Dept., Los Angeles Trade Technical College,

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