10 Factors to Address in Your College Classroom

iStock by Getty Images: Drazen Zigic

Each of the following could be its own article but for now, I’ll list these ten factors to address for a classroom where you can teach and your students can learn (and vice versa, of course!):

1. Civility. Many have written about the loss of civility in today’s society (which tragically, continues to deteriorate) and certainly, there is no question about the need to remind and teach students what civility looks like, sounds like, and feels like in the classroom. And in particular, in YOUR classroom. Talk about it, model it, and expect it. Learn ways of responding and dealing with any breaches to what is expected.
2. A sense of urgency. Unless you are teaching your students throughout the rest of their lives, they need to understand that there are times for urgency. Starting class on time (in my mind) has a sense of urgency. Getting assignments completed requires a sense of urgency. Help establish this with your students. Urgency does not equate to panic and that may be a lesson they desperately (urgently) need to learn.
3. A way of distinguishing priorities. Graduate students have difficulty determining priorities and undergraduates almost certainly do. Spend some time with your students helping them draw distinctions between and among the various competing demands on their time, energy, and attention. Hmmm…and you might even learn something while you’re teaching them some strategies. Just a thought.
4. Respect for you and their fellow classmates (which you model and reciprocate). Depending on your students and from where they have hailed, they may or may not have an understanding of respect in the classroom. It may never have been expected, modeled, or provided. Now that they are in college, it’s time they know how to demonstrate respect to their classmates and to you. You are likely to have to deal with this throughout the term in big and small ways, so be prepared.
5. Decorum. What is acceptable and what isn’t? Is walking into the classroom with a giant bag of hamburgers, fries, and a muffin and then proceeding to get it out during class (with a fair amount of fanfare) acceptable? Define with the students what will be considered reasonable decorum for your classroom environment. Learning — and everyone’s comfort — are paramount in the decision-making. I wrote about “decorum” on a plane previously. It’s a little edgy, but…
6. Calm. As a professor, you don’t know what might happen in your classroom. Unfortunately, there are too many cases of students having breakdowns or other difficulties (including violence) in classrooms and on campuses. Be aware that there may be a time when calm is called for. You are the one they will turn to instinctively and your attitude can set the tone for what happens next. Be aware that you may have an inner strength and reserve of calm that you aren’t conscious of. I hope you never need it for a horrid situation, but, sadly, you might. So, think about what you might do “if” and schedule time to talk to your students here and there about “calm.” [[Very early in my college teaching career — on the first evening of a new class — a woman (who I later found out had a history of problems and was actually not even enrolled at my university) began pacing up and down the aisle and for some reason, I was actually afraid she had a gun in her purse. No part of my training or experience gave me a sense for what to do. But I had 50 other students who were alarmed and I drew on a deep well of calm and was able to get the woman out of the room (without her purse). I had left the room with a direction to carry on with something I had put up on the screen (students were working in groups) and went out into the hall to try to deal with the situation. When I walked back in — calm on the outside and about to pass out on the inside — I calmly asked the students what kinds of information they had come up with in their groups. They all looked at me with faces I will never forget. Let’s say we bonded as a learning community that night in a way that almost makes me cry to this day as I write this.]]
7. Safety. If you are a chemistry professor or a mining engineering professor or a faculty member in a number of other disciplines, establishing safety rules and guidelines is a major part of what you do. Everyone, however, needs to be thinking about safety in the classroom. Physical safety. Mental/intellectual safety. Emotional safety. Spiritual safety. Think about it and consider how safe your classroom is (and needs to be).
8. Protocols for _______! Establish protocols for as many different repetitive occurrences as you can. You can have protocols for how assignments are submitted. Protocols for getting into groups. Protocols for leaving the classroom better and cleaner than you found it. Establish protocols and everything runs more smoothly and productively.
9. Relationships with your students and among your students. Previously, I have written about how to show students that you care about them right from the first day of class — here’s one article. You want to help establish connections between and among your students throughout the semester. I am not advocating the — what I consider over-the-top fooling around — getting-to-know-you activities that take half a class period every week. It is quite reasonable — and supportive of learning — to make sure that students know at least a few of the other students in the class. Make sure that they are grouped with different students for various in-class activities and that they introduce themselves. You can facilitate connections without forcing them.
10. Guidelines, parameters, policies. Whatever you want to call them…establish the ways that you want the learning (both in and out of the classroom) to flow. You can have policies on emails to you, using the chat board, setting times for appointments, and so forth. You don’t always know before the semester what you need but you’ll begin to understand more as you proceed — and as you learn what works and what doesn’t.

Although I’ve only provided a few sentences on each of these, I hope at least one of the suggestions reminds you of something you might not have thought about.

To access a resource — my gift to you — I highly recommend If You Do Nothing Else This Semester. With the strategies presented here, you will get the strategies you need not only to have a successful semester, but a successful year.