("It's a Lack of Respect", She Replied. -- continued)
Mediocrity is also the heritage left by administrators who move on without addressing the problems effectively.
The Need for Clear Consistent Support from Administrators
Ultimately what happens in the classroom is the responsibility of the administration---the president, the deans, and the department chairs. They need to do several things, clearly and consistently.
Set the Right Tone
First, administrators should set the right tone. The president, the dean, and the department chairs need to convey---in their attitudes, their policies, what they say, and what they do---that academic excellence and respectful behavior, in class and outside of class, are part of the ethos of the school, that these are values that everyone should subscribe to and standards that everyone should follow.
Create and Enforce Clear Standards
Second, the president, the deans, and the chairs need to create and enforce clear written standards for what is expected of students in the classroom and what penalties students will incur for violating those standards. It is not fair to faculty or students to leave this undone.
In the last school where I taught, the Student Code of Conduct contained not one single word about student behavior in the classroom. That meant that there were no consistent standards and that only the force of the instructor’s personality and personal classroom management strategies were available to the instructor to manage the class and teach it at the same time. At some level, students realized this even if they had not read the Code. Allowing such a situation to exist is dereliction of duty!
Enforce Standards Consistently
Third, the standards must be enforced consistently, as written, every time, by everyone in authority. Moreover, the standards must be enforced in the classroom, in extra-curricular activities where there is a faculty advisor, and in the dormitories. A gay student should not have to go all the way to the president and threaten legal action in order to get anti-gay graffiti removed from his dormitory door.
Provide Classroom Management Instruction for Faculty Members
Fourth, in critiquing this analysis, my partner---who has taken community college classes recently ---suggested that classes in classroom management for adjunct faculty memberscould be extremely helpful. I think he is right.
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