Mutual Respect

• Be positive about the course and course material to your students. Students do better and learn more when they trust that the Department has done its best to develop a good course and choose a good book.
• Learn your students' names and use their names as early in the term as possible. You may want to get to your classroom early to talk informally with students before you begin the class. Encourage the students to get to know each other and work on their homework in groups.
• Always treat students with courtesy and listen to them carefully. Expect them to treat both you and their fellow classmates respectfully.
• Don't be afraid to let your students know something about you personally outside of your role as teacher.
• Don't waste the students' time. Begin and end the class promptly. Prepare thoroughly for each class, paying special attention to the homework problems even though they may seem trivial. Students get restless and angry when the instructor reads, rereads and stumbles through a homework solution. Hand back the students' tests and papers promptly.
• Meet your obligations. Keep all appointments you make with students. When you hold office hours, don't leave early assuming that no one is coming. It's often a useful strategy to make specific appointments with students during your office hours, particularly if they could benefit from the extra attention. Discussions during office hours create good relations with students who then get a chance to know you more personally.
• Don't make snap judgments about students' capabilities - the students will often prove you wrong.
• Don't discuss a student's performance or behavior with other students.
• Be careful not to categorize students on the basis of race or gender.
• As a teacher in charge of a class (or even as a tutor or grader) you must be very careful to avoid any non-professional relationship with your students. Close personal or romantic attachments are inappropriate, even when completely mutual. Because a student might feel that he/she could gain academic favors by agreeing to a closer personal relationship (or suffer by refusing), any situation with the potential for exploitation, realized or not, must be scrupulously avoided.

Dishonesty and Cheating

• An atmosphere of mutual trust and a sense of classroom community will relieve some of the competitive pressures on your students. However, there are certain specific steps which you can take to prevent cheating.
• Whenever you want problems done independently, state it clearly. Tell them that, in general, cooperative studying will improve their learning (it will), but that in this particular instance you want them to work alone.
• Unfortunately, classrooms are often too crowded to allow alternate seating, so you can only spread them out as much as possible. Have them put away all books and papers.
• The most common form of cheating is copying from a neighbor's paper. Don't hesitate to preface a quiz with something like, "I know we're crowded here, but there are serious penalties for academic dishonesty (see the Student's Guide), so you must keep your eyes on your own paper.
• Proctor conspicuously and carefully.
• Detailed instructions for proctoring the uniform exams will be given to you before exam day.
• Occasionally a student will try to alter a test paper after you hand it back and then claim you made a grading error. You can discourage this as you correct by indicating errors in red pencil and drawing a line through any questions which are left blank. If you suspect a student of doing this, speak to the course coordinator before returning the paper.
• If you are concerned about a probable cheating incident, consult the coordinator. Don't try to handle it yourself. Don't accuse a student of cheating without very solid evidence. For your own protection it is better to go through channels.
• Keep your grades in a secure place.
• Many cases of dishonesty take the form of highly suspicious excuses. You can ask for documentation of any medical excuse but otherwise you will have to use your own judgment about whether or not to accept an excuse for late work, missed tests, etc. It's better not to challenge the validity of an excuse and certainly don't be sarcastic (sometimes an implausible story will turn out to be true). Remind students that they should alert you in advance if they encounter problems with keeping deadlines. Don't bother with excuses about missed quizzes; it's far easier to announce that you will drop one or more quiz scores. Whenever you find yourself negotiating with a student, be as charitable as possible without making extra work for yourself or being unfair to the other members of the class.

Unusual Situations Which Can Arise With Individual Students