The teaching plan of the practical lesson №1

Try to maintain a professional demeanor with students. This implies some distance, politeness, and a focus on the intellectual over the emotional side. This is really necessary in effective planning of lessons and grading of students. The focus should be on acting as a teacher not as a buddy.

Be Available — as a Teacher and Mentor, Not as a Friend

Finally, be there for your students on campus—in and outside of class. This means not only in teaching class but in advising which classes to take next term, writing letters of recommendation, assisting in understanding assignments, and discussing future professional and educational goals. If students see everything you can do for them as their teacher, they will forget about having you as a “friend.” Friends and teachers help in very different ways and ultimately perform different roles.

So does all of this mean that teachers can’t have any relationship with students outside of class at all? No, it doesn’t: teachers can and should go on class outings, for example, with their students—but as teachers, and the outings should be related in some way to education.

It’s all right for students to bring their personal issues to you to help with—how to resolve a problem with a roommate, for example, or how to balance a social life and school life. These are issues that teachers generally have experience in and can offer help with. But the relationship is really not mutual, and that is why teachers really can’t be a student’s “friend”; because a student shared with me her concerns with her roommate does not mean I am free to share my marital issues with her. Just as a parental role really precludes that kind of “sharing,” so does a teacher’s, and just as parents might want to protect their children from the sometimes brutal adult life, so does a teacher want to preserve her classroom space from the ugly outside world. One way to do this is by preserving the teacher-student relationship.