We’re now past the worst of the pandemic. The last two years have surely been a whirlwind with remote learning, hybrid classes, and online teaching to make the most out of an unprecedented event. But now the time has come to shake things up with post-pandemic pedagogy strategies for the new era of teaching. A new theory has emerged in the teaching world that “how much strict is strict enough”. Well, as it’s completely a subjective discussion let’s analyse in an unbiased manner that, as a teacher, how strict you should be while teaching and that too in this post pandemic age. Here’s what you need to do when you head back to the classroom teaching.
1. Plan
Before teaching, try planning in advance for a change. Also, as it's a new age for you too, make a fresh start for your students, try relating your teaching and your course syllabus to the real world and incorporate relevant case studies, this will make a brand-new teacher to your students.
2. Build Relationships
Now this is something you already must be doing but try another trackway this time. Build relationships with students even before your class starts and sustain those relationships outside the class as well.
3. Have Fun
Well, if you remember that saying that students mostly refract to the mood of their teacher. Yes, find a balance between fun and being pragmatic in the classroom. And students do appreciate it often when teachers have a bit of fun and aren’t all “business.”
Now, let’s analyse how strict you should be while teaching.
Surprises are good but not in the terms of deadlines or assessments. As a teacher, try to be consistent in your approach. Whether you should never accept late work or should always make an exception.
You should always go for a clearly stated policy for late work submissions and stick to this policy. The reason being that the students always try to find patterns in their exams to cover as much of the syllabus as possible and get ahead of their peers. Therefore, maintaining a consistent routine will give students an opportunity to shine.
Now, in which situations you should be strict and where you shouldn’t be, is a tricky call. For that, let’s analyse it based on the priority of the work.
1. Not Flexible
If a student misses a deadline, they receive zero points on that assignment. This approach works for low stakes works, such as reading quizzes on every textbook chapter. Here, missing one or two deadlines will not sabotage a lot so it wouldn’t greatly impact a student’s understanding.
2. Somewhat Flexible
A student can submit the assignment late, but their score will be penalized.
This approach works best in situations where missing one assignment will negatively impact a student’s understanding of core concepts and successful completion of future assignments. Therefore, students who miss deadlines should be given a small scoring penalty just to encourage on-time submissions in future.
3. Very Flexible
Being ultra-flexible works best when low-stakes assessments are considered part of a student’s final scores. Therefore, students must initiate contact with their teacher to verify their understanding of the missed assignment’s concepts.
