The Secret ...

I found out the secret of how your student will think you're an awesome teacher. Here it is.

Teach badly for a month ... well bad according to the students. Assign them homework every night for the sake of assigning it. Speed through the material so they don't understand and then spend a whole week and a half reviewing and reteaching them what you tried to teach them the first time. By now they should be nice and frustrated.

The next step is to have a class meeting and ask them what they want from you. They will suggest that you do the job properly. That you assign homework after you've done lots of examples, give them time to copy things down from the board, and give them lots of class time to work on their work so they leave the classroom confident that they can do their homework. During class, ask the students lots of questions.

The kicker is to point out to them that you are actually incorporating what they suggested to you. Then, let the compliments fly.

"Ms. Small Town, all teachers should be like you. You actually listen to what we have to say."

"Well students, this is not just my math class, this is our math class."

"Ms. Small Town, you are an awesome teacher!"

"Yeah, Ms. Small Town for president"

"If all teachers were like you, I'd actually like coming to school."

These are actually quotes from the students today. I'm in teaching heaven. It almost makes up from my Health and Career Ed class.