Connecting With Your Students

"As a teacher, you can make progress effectively and much quicker if the student feels a connection; something tangible that shows the student you care."

We have all heard something along these lines before, and most of the time it holds true. Think about yourself (in or outside of the teaching profession). Are you more apt to listen to someone you have a personal relationship with, or are you more likely to carry out orders from a stranger who starts making demands?

Connecting with Twenty-first century students, truly understanding what motivates them and what their interests are, can be challenging and perplexing; especially if you do not have children of your own around that age (ahem, me). We need to work harder to find out their interests, as they change as quickly as technology has been advancing. However, The Teacher Chronicles, a site for teachers that puts out online articles, addresses some basic steps you can take to begin to understand where most of your students are coming from in terms of the world in which they are growing up. This particular article addresses basic steps teachers can take in order to better relate to the students they teach. My personal favorite is #18: "Get a new mobile phone. Your phone from 2006 is too old." Until recently, most of my fifth (and third graders last year) had better phones than me.

I also stumbled across a very interesting artcle from Edutopia that addresses the difference of how today's students brains have been trained the intake of information, and subsequently what teachers around the country are doing to tap into that learning style. It is a long article, but worth the read.

You have two options for this week's post (you can address option 1 or option 2 or both).

Option 1:
Read the article from

The Teacher Chronicles and tell us which step(s) you would like to try in order to become a "2.0 teacher." If you have completed all of the steps listed, then which ones did you find to be most beneficial for you as a teacher relating to your students?

Option 2:
Read the article from Edutopia and tell us about something interesting you learned from the article and how it might impact your teaching style and/or how you relate to your students.