Written by: Alen Kuriakose, Trainer HSSW
Do you have students who constantly make excuses? Do they try to blame poor grades and breach on their teachers or fellow students without being responsible for their actions? Do they misfile their mistakes while enumerating the day’s activities to a parent? Is there anything you can do to change their ways?
For an educator such kind of situations may happen often. And sometimes it may be severe. Making students accountable for their own success isn’t easy. It needs complete patience and effective monitoring to enforce it.
Creating a Positive and Respectful Group Atmosphere for Students
One place to start is creating a classroom atmosphere that is conducive to accountability and responsible learning. When we establish a friendly atmosphere and enforce expectations and consequences, the students may take ownership of their own behaviour. Creating a positive group identity and helping each student know that they are part of the group helps. Also create a culture of mutual respect that allows students to feel like adults.
Greeting students at the door is a big help to establish confidence in students as well as the teacher. Whenever you are referring to a student’s behaviour do it as briefly, matter-of-factly, and quietly as possible. The teachers who work to create a respectful group mentality will have a greater chance of promoting personal accountability in their students.
Making Students and Parents Partners in their Success
Students should have the opportunity to take charge of their academic success by formulating and following through on their own plan to improve. By assuming responsibility for their mistakes they learn the true value of personal accountability.
When students have a low grade in an examination, they should be given a blank plan with a list of approaches that will lead to improvement. The goals are realistic—no more missing or incomplete assignments, a target grade for the rest of the term. Next let they identify specific steps they will take to meet the goals for the remainder of the term. By allowing students to take the lead, they can be put in charge of their own academic success.
To ensure that students are held accountable at home and school, and to boost the likelihood that they will follow through on efforts to reach their goals, parents should be included in conversation. This way, students can work from a steady foundation of positive reinforcement, which encourages them to reach their goals and also teaches them the value of personal responsibility.
Teachers should work in tandem with parents to help students grow into self-conscious and constructive adults. Meeting that goal is not always easy, but once parents see you as an advocate in their child’s development, you’ll be on the way to making sure the lessons from school are being enforced at home, and vice versa.
Use of Rubric to Get Students Involved in their Work
Rubric is another way to enforce accountability. A set of instructions should be given to the students in the begin of day’s class. Check up whether they are meeting up with it regularly with the partial knowledge of the student. Facilitate them to be accountable to the responsibilities and duties entrusted on them. Evaluate it once in a while. In the beginning students will be skeptical, but later on we can see significant changes in their approach to work.
Students seem to respond productively when teachers give them the opportunity to take charge of their academic success. By holding students accountable for their work and responsible for maintaining a personal level of excellence, teachers can provide their classes with the necessary tools they need to better themselves. Accountability breeds responsibility, and students who develop the tools to target and improve their academic shortcomings will, in turn, develop the skills they need to go far in life.
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