AVATAR: A FEW LESSONS ON TEACHING Part II

Avatar conveyed several messages, some of which have been interpreted as offensive. However, I received one positive key educational message:

All teachers on this planet should probably gather intel on their Net Geners and leverage that intel in their teaching strategies, maybe even teach them English. Teachers can be temporarily transported into the rich, diverse, techy world of their students.

Here are 3 steps to consider in this process:

1. Understand your students: You need to thoroughly understand them and their culture, behaviors, habits, and latest technologies, even iPad, should it take off. To ignore your students’ culture, mindset, and world is unwise. You should really get to know your students one-on-one and as a group. Collect “intel” on their interests, intelligence strengths, learning styles, and the way they think and behave.

2. Leverage their characteristics, behaviors, and habits: Use your “intel” of their characteristics to design and custom tailor your teaching strategies for them. Consider each characteristic and how one or more teaching techniques can draw on their specific interests, intelligences, and learning styles. You should be sensitive to their individual strengths and weaknesses and try to build on the former before helping them to compensate for the latter. Your strategies should involve a one-size-fits-one approach.

3. Teach new content with different strategies: The connections between you and your students and their characteristics and your teaching strategies create a foundation of trust and credibility. Now you can add new content and other strategies to your teaching. Experiment with the latest technologies. Your students are now on board and will eagerly assist you on that journey. Solicit their input. Involve them in decisions in your learner-centered environment.

With or without Avatar, these steps can improve your teaching of this bright-eyed-and–bushy-tailed group of frisky Net Geners you see almost every day. The extraordinary experience of Avatar just punctuated the importance of these thoughts.

For further intel on teaching strategies matched to Net Gener learner characteristics, checkout Articles 2008a and 2009a on my Web under Publications (see link in margin to right). 

As always, let me know your thoughts, especially if you are an Avatar fan. Have a fantastic teaching experience this spring!

COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC

Punctuality Is Not Just a Time Management Tool: It's a Career Maker or Breaker!

Are you ever late to anything? Do you arrive at your classes before or on time? What about your meetings with students, professors, patients, clients, or employees? How about lunch and dinner dates and doctors’ appointments? Are you on time, as expected, without exception, without excuses, all of the time? If YES, congratulations. That's fantastic. I’m proud of you. In fact, you can probably skip over this blog, collect $200, and go to your next meeting, of course, on time. If your answer was NO to those 14 questions at the beginning of this over bloated paragraph, you should be totally ashamed of yourself. What is wrong with you?

In researching the material for my last book on time management, I was figuratively smacked upside my head with the time management gurus' advice on the most critical factors. Among the 46 techniques in my book, PUNCTUALITY struck me as numero uno. As you can tell, I was smacked in Spanish! I thought you might benefit from what I learned. (Sidebar: You should know that I'm not punctual; I'm early to EVERYTHING. I'm one of those compulsive characters who sets my watches and clocks 15-20 minutes ahead. When my daughters were little and rode in their car seats, they would look at the car clock and scream,"Dad, what's the REEEAL time?" They still scream the same question 20 years later when they're in my car.)

POSITIVE ASPECTS
Let's start with the positive aspects of punctuality. When you are consistently punctual, you put yourself in a position of power. Your punctuality makes the statement: “I respect your time as well as my own. And I want to be a power person like Ironman, Spiderman, The Hulk, Conan O'Brien, or Oprah. I want to be your hero.” I think you’re getting carried away. This paragraph is about being on time, NOT world domination! Oops! Sorry, I get excited sometimes.

Time is valuable and should not be wasted by delays for any reason. When you’re punctual, you can demand that of others. As faculty, administrators, students, and business leaders, you start your meetings on time and end them on time (Note: A future blog will deal with how to conduct meetings effectively and efficiently.)

NEGATIVE ASPECTS
Now, let's consider the negative side. If you are not punctual and make no effort to change that behavior, you have no leverage over others. Arriving late regularly to any appointment says: “I have no respect for your time. It’s just not that important. It's ALL about me, not you.” Wasting other people's time is insulting. You need to be whacked. How are you going to get anything accomplished if you have no regard for time?

Any one who cannot keep appointments may not be trusted to do other things. That behavior calls his or her dependability into question. That’s significant. Do you see where this is heading? If you can’t count on somebody in a clutch situation, there’s a serious problem. When she says “I have your back,” who will believe her? You better find someone else to cover your back.

Lack of punctuality can also be linked to integrity. Showing lack of respect for your own time questions your respect for others as well as your values, priorities, honesty, and moral soundness. All of a sudden, simply being late all the time can blow respect, trust, dependability, and integrity to smithereens. They are critical character attributes. They can turn into career makers or breakers and, maybe even worse, relationship makers or breakers!!

WHAT TO DO?
Whatever season of your career or life you are now experiencing, examine your punctuality. If you are habitually late to everything, STOP! in the name of your relationships. Consider seriously what you are doing or what others say you are doing and correct that behavior before it’s too late. Just a thought.

COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC