Hi. In this post, I cover the topic of respecting student personalities.
The motivation behind this post was based on some recent experiences from my work. In addition, the motivation is also based on my brother's past teacher who kept pushing him to be more talkative despite his good grades in the past. I think this teacher had a bias against my brother. My mom was against this teacher ever since.
Everyone Is Different
This is obvious but everyone is different in their own ways. They are different in terms of their outside appearances, skills, interests, strengths and personalities. Some students like arts, some like music, some like dancing, some like martial arts, some like science and so on.
In terms of personalities, you have the outgoing ones, the not so outgoing ones and some in between. There are times where you would like some students to be more of a certain personality. The thing is that you should not force it. Students are still learning about themselves as they grow. A quiet kid at age 7 may turn out to be a pop star or rapper at age 20. For teachers and educators, they should accept the young students as who they are (as long as they are not violent).
Teamwork Amongst Students
From the students side, respect amongst fellow students is important. This is even more important in partner and team based assigned work. I do think that teachers should mix things up and have team based assignments. The teams could be as big as four or five in school or university. Teams could be randomized or the students can choose amongst themselves. Randomized teams is a bit better as students in these teams have to be able to cooperate and get along.
For me personally, I am not a fan of team based assignments and work in school. Someone on the team can drag the others down or someone who did not do work takes credit. But there are good things in team based work from a learning perspective. New team members learn about each others personalities, strengths, skills, ways of thinking and philosophies. In order for a team to deliver good work and even present well, team members do have to get along, share a vision and deliver a good product. There are cases where you have to work with people you may not like but the work has to be done.
Learning how to work in teams as students does transfer over to outside of school. Teamwork occurs in workplaces, families, sports and even friend groups. There are times where you cannot really choose who you work with. You have to go with what you get. If someone in a team is disrespectful, you most likely have to point it out. You may also have to say something like "Please don't do that again.".
I don't know about you, I think there is too much emphasis on learning skills from slides and books. There could be more learning about getting along with others and people skills. Team exercises in school is a low risk way of learning of how to deal with others and how to work together.
