Student feature: Stephen

A couple of weeks ago, at the general TF meeting we had, there was a question posed to participants…"who is the best teacher you ever had?". In thinking about that question, I was able to reaffirm that the most important component of any teacher's experience was the personal relationship he/she develops with the students. It was no wonder that my freshman physics teacher from Mekelle University in Ethiopia was at the top of the list, and mainly because of the passion he had for his students and the length he went to have meaningful relationships with his students.

In that spirit, I wanted to do a series on some of the students I got to meet and know at Ypsilanti High. In the interest of privacy, I will change the names (may be Angela or Carol can tell me if it okay to use actual names..). So here we go, for the first installment

Stephen:

When Stephen is paying attention, he is a very good student. He has a special relationship with Mrs. Porter because she has a long history with his family, and knows his parents pretty well. When he has done his homework, he really appreciates being noticed for it. If you for some reason skip over him, or seemed to not care about the homework he has done, he will point to you that he finished all of them and they were right.
We have a daily routine in class where answers for the homework is called out and students correct their work. At the end of the process, he often raises his hand and calls me over to show me how many of them he has got right and that he did very well. Because of that, when I am going around the class helping with either starters or some other class work, I make sure that I pat him on the back for the work he is doing right, and tell him if there are any corrections in a nice way.
However, Stephen is easily distracted. Especially if there are a couple other students that are getting rowdy or talking around him, he often forgets about the class. Now, it helps that he is one of those kids that actually listen to the teacher as well, and if he gets called on it, he will try to pay attention back to the class. But usually, the most effective solution has been to change where he is sitting to the more 'attentive' part of the class (and that can also change from day to day).

Stephen likes the wolverines, and he might be interested in going to school here. He has improved significantly over the past quarter (which can easily be seen from the homework folder with past grades that students keep) and I believe will finish up the semester pretty well.