A college student requested a "Higher Ed" discussion about meaningful student-teacher relationships – both how to form them and how those relationships could impact grades and behavior. In this episode of KUT's podcast Higher Ed, KUT's Jennifer Stayton and Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger discuss how students and teachers can best engage each other to ensure that dynamic goes well.
The relationship between teacher and student can be complex. Teachers can be mentors, advisers and role models to students. But teachers also grade students' work and are thus in an assessor role as well. And, as Ed points out, those two roles can sometimes be in conflict.
Ed and Jennifer discuss ways that students and teachers can build relationships that go well for both sides. Ed's tips for teachers: Don't play mind games or play favorites with students. His tips for students: Engage teachers about the material and show enthusiasm and curiosity.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about teacher-student relationships and the one student behavior Ed won't tolerate. It's also time to solve the mystery from the last episode about the scarf, carrot and coal.
This episode was recorded Feb. 28, 2018.
For all of the Higher Ed episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.
