So it’s your first day of class. Maybe you’re a home school student joining a United States history and literature seminar. Maybe you’re in a private or public school new to you. Maybe you’re off to college.
Whatever the case, here are some tips about how to be a student from day one.
Whatever the case, here are some tips about how to be a student from day one.
- Don’t sit in the back of the classroom unless the teacher assigns you a seat there. By taking a seat in the back of the class, you are signaling the teacher and the rest of your classmates that you are inordinately shy, disinterested in the class, or afraid of being called on. Unless the class is enormous, a freshman university class with a hundred students or so, the teacher is just as likely to call on those in the back of the class as the front.
- Turn off your cell phone. Texting while someone is talking to you is rude. Texting in class while your teacher is lecturing or discussing material is ruder. You’re sending a message not just by text, but also to the teacher. And believe me, that teacher sees you.
- Dress appropriately. Education is a serious business. If you arrive in class looking as if you just rolled out of bed, dressed in pajama bottoms or gym gear, you are delivering an impression. It’s an impression you don’t want delivered. Dress up rather than down. Several times, as an experiment, I asked my students to wear more formal attire on a test day. Several students found that wearing a dress or a coat and tie to class made them feel more competent taking the test.
- Sit up and brighten the look on your face. Many teenagers wear a blank mask to conceal their emotions. Many sit slumped over, looking like wrung out dishrags. Like other teachers, I have stood before students who looked as if they were wearing a death mask. I detected not the slightest interest in what I was saying, only to be told later by their mothers or fathers how much their children loved my class. Try to look interested. If that look doesn’t come naturally to you, fake it till you make it.
- Do not talk with friends while the teacher is lecturing. This lack of manners usually occurs with students in middle school, but can extend into high school. Highly irritating. Grow up.
- Avoid being a know-it-all. When the teacher asks a question of Steve, one of your classmates, and Steve hesitates in his reply, don’t start waving your hand like a maniac and shouting out, “I know, I know!” You’ll annoy your teacher, your classmates, and Steve. Either wait for the teacher to call on you or discretely raise your hand.
- Avoid dissing your classmates. Sarcasm hurts. It shuts down inquiry and has little positive effect. Leave your snide remarks at the door.
- If you don’t understand a concept, ask the teacher. Don’t leave the classroom bewildered. Don’t return home and then email the teacher asking for an explanation. Ask during the class—undoubtedly others in the class are equally bemused—and the teacher should be happy to offer an explanation.
- Beware of teachers unable to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” You can usually tell when a teacher, stumped by a question, blusters, hemming and hawing about the answer. These words—“I don’t know, but I’ll find out”—are the mark of great teachers and great students. Make use of them.
- Many times, students performing poorly in class ask the teacher for an “extra credit project.” Here is what you are saying to that teacher when you make this request: “I was too lazy to study for your class, but I am worried about my grade. So I am going to create extra work for you and for me by asking for extra credit.” Ugh. Do the assigned work.
- Do not cheat. Do not plagiarize. If you are caught cheating, you by rights deserve a grade of zero for that test. Again, any teacher other than a somnambulist is soon likely to see you cheating. And if you steal ideas from online or hard copy sources without crediting those sources, the odds are you will be caught. Tracking down your act of plagiarism on the Internet is relative simple. A few words, a unique phrase, and you are nailed. One of my students, when I confronted him with an essay he had taken word for word from the Internet, kept shaking his head and saying, “I don’t know how this could have happened, I just don’t know how it could happen.” Really?
- Take an interest in the subject. You despise writing, but your parents enroll you in a home school seminar in writing. You want to major in psychology and discover you have to take a dreaded statistics course. Force yourself, however difficult the challenge, to dig into the subject. When I was in graduate school, I wanted to write my thesis on the Crusades. My adviser, Dr. James Barefield, a great teacher and a fine man, told me I should write instead on “The King’s Council and the Minority of Henry III of England.” With a heavy heart, I did as he suggested. Halfway through my research, I was truly enjoying myself, diving deep into the machinations of Henry’s various advisers, relating them in some ways to the Watergate debacle then being televised across the nation. Again, fake it till you make it.
Apply some of these ideas, and you won’t just be a body occupying a chair in a classroom. You’ll be on your way to becoming a student.