The snoozers, the slackers, the whiners, the fighters, the dreamers, the sporties, the doodlers . . . How can a teacher possibly teach such an unwelcoming crowd? To tell you the truth, it takes a lot of stamina and hard work, but the rate of success really depends on the students themselves.
Student cannot excel if they are not healthy, enthusiastic, and hardworking. Students need to apply themselves to their schoolwork if they intend to do well. If the problem is that they do not know why they should bother to do well, then they should have a good talking to. If the problem is something they cannot control, perhaps a special school or specialized program would be better.
But we have to deal with each problem individually. The snoozers, for example, tend to be high school students who are either overworked, overwhelmed with extra-curricular activities, or over-partied. They may think that they can sleep six hours a night and not suffer from it, but even they can’t pull this off. Tell them that students need 8 or 9 hours of sleep per night. If a person sleeps this much or more, they can perform tasks in 45 minutes that would have taken an hour before, so it all evens out any way. Also tell them that every time they cram another activity into their busy schedules, they decrease their successfulness in all their others. Tell them also that they need to develop healthy sleeping habits now because the effects of not getting enough sleep only worsen as we age.
With slackers, the problem is probably laziness but is perhaps business as well. The slacker needs to sit down and talk about his or her priorities with the distraught teacher. What is keeping them from excelling? It may very well be TV watching. A study has concluded that students who watch more than 10 hours of TV weekly are guaranteed not to be good students. If this seems to be the problem, perhaps parents should be enlightened with regard to this fact.
Whiners seem to be in every class. They tend to complain about every little assignment and how much work it is. They complain about not being notified in advance for tests and about not being taught about things put on tests. These students generally blame you for their own forgetfulness. Show them the curriculum and what has to be done for them to pass the course, that way you won’t seem like the bad person who made them work so hard. Then allow them to
