Working Productively with Difficult Students
Most students are curious, energetic, and eager to learn. However, faculty will encounter some students who are challenging, frustrating, perplexing, or just annoying individuals who provoke the classic teacher's lament, "I spend 90% of my time on 10% of the students." During this workshop, participants analyze case studies of challenging or "difficult" learners and identify strategies for working productively with students who exhibit one or more of the following characteristics.
- Expect exceptions and special privileges (that doesn't apply to me, does it?)
- Whining and complaining
- Always in a crisis
- Argumentative or confrontational
- Willing to take ethical short-cuts or breach professional standards of behavior
In the second section of this workshop, participants explore the affective (emotional) side of learning by reviewing typical changes in students' self-perception as they progress through the curriculum and analyze reasons why students may perceive the educational environment to be threatening, thus producing risk reduction behaviors. The third section of the workshop provides strategies and suggestions for assessing potential underlying problems when a student struggles academically but is not a behavior or attitude problem. Basic types of learning disabilities are reviewed and illustrated with case studies; warning signals (red flags) are described.
