Students love attention. Don’t we all? But how do you give the 120 to 150 students you see each day the attention they need?

Newcastle University’s Professor Sugata Mitra is teaming grandmothers and other volunteers in England with students in his schools in India. In this and previous experiments he has shown that just having someone to talk to about their schoolwork inspires students to do better in school. These people do not even need to understand what the students are talking about. All that’s needed is empathetic listening skills.

One solution for Carondelet might be to find a bunch of retired people who would like to chat with our students on FaceTime or or Skype. We have thousands of such people available in local retirement communities. All we need is an organizer to make it happen.

While this might be a future solution there are other things we can do right now. One easy thing I do is take role as each student enters the classroom. I say hi and exchange a second or two of amenities. For the students I miss, I walk around the room and greet each one of them. To make this go quickly I keep a seating chart in a plastic sleeve. I use a marker to mark each student picture. After taking role, I erase the marking and am ready for the next day.

Students do quite a bit of team work and seat work in my classes. Instead of sitting at my desk doing my work, I get up and wander from team to team asking questions and talking to students. Like the grandmothers, one of my favorite openers is. “Show me what you are working on.” If a student is not working I tell her I will return in a few minutes to see what she is doing. Most share with me and seem to enjoy the experience. This also helps the whole class move into work mode.

People do like to talk about themselves. Look at me right now. The only difference is that the students get immediate feedback. I must wait and see if anyone will respond. As you know, immediate feedback is much more effective in reenforcing positive behavior. A bonus is that this interacting with students activity also makes me feel better. Students have many interesting ideas and working the room is a great way to hear their ideas.