How often do we share our creations, performances, and/or writing with our students?

1. Teacher Vulnerability: A Precursor
to Student Engagement, Rapport,
and Performance
Two Year College Association Midwest Conference
Grand Valley State University
Grand Rapids, MI
10/4/14
A’Kena LongBenton, ABD, EdS
Wayne County Community College
akenalong@aol.com

2. Thought-provoking Questions
• As teachers, we instruct our students to
“write…write…write…and write some more,”
but how often do we write?
• As much as we critique our students’ writing,
are we willing to be vulnerable enough to
share our creations, performances, and/or
writings with our overly critical students?

3. Logistics
• Workshop Questions Web Link:
http://goo.gl/AzCOQC
• Today’s Workshop Slides: _____
• Poll Everywhere: http://goo.gl/vBTV3p

4. Vulnerability Video
• http://goo.gl/A8hCcX

5. Presentation Premise
• As a regular practice, I allow my students to
assess my performance.
• Specifically, in my college communication and
English courses, I deliver speeches and share
my published writings with students,
respectively.

6. Peer-to-Peer Learning
• To further model assignment expectations, I
also share student-generated speech videos
and student writings (with their permission, of
course).

7. • It pre-exposes students to the grading rubric that will
assess their performance.
• It illustrates the confidence in my own performance.
• Student voices are heard.
• Builds students’ confidence.
• Builds classroom community, i.e., “We’re all in this
learning process together.”

8. ARCS Model of Motivation
J. Keller (1983)
• Attention—arousing interest
• Relevance—creating relevance
• Confidence—developing an expectancy of
success
• Satisfaction—producing satisfaction through
intrinsic/extrinsic rewards

9. Modeling Expectations
• Because, I am a proponent of modeling,
sharing my performances allows me to model
the behavioral objectives that I expect my
students to ultimately demonstrate.
• I believe that students best perform when
expectations are first modeled for them.

10. Turning the Tables
• Besides, students get a genuine “kick” out of
the “tables being turned” where they can
ultimately assess their teachers.

11. Student Engagement
• It’s also very interesting to witness how
engaged they are in this section of the lesson.

12. Naysayers
• Of course, you will have the student whose
goal is to give you a “C” or lower regardless of
how stellar your performance is.

13. Lies vs. Truth
• However, the majority of the class will not
have “personal axes to grind.”
• Plus, the “get even” students just expose
where their intentions lie (no pun intended).
• Their scores just serve as outliers and do not
affect the instructor’s median and mode
scores.

14. Who’s the author?
• As a former high school teacher, I remember
reading an engaging text to my 9th grade
students and them later asking who the
author was (I purposefully omitted this
notable detail.).

15. Focus on the Believers
• I casually responded, “Me.”
• The first time, most of the class was amazed!
• Of course, a few skeptics didn’t believe it, but
then again, they rarely believed anything. 
• Once proven, they later accepted my response as
“truth.”

16. • Similarly, there is a creation, performance,
and/or writing in all of us…just waiting to be
shared. Have you shared yours lately?

17. Sharing cont.
• As a college instructor, I am committed to
further sharing mine as I instruct my students.
• Please join me and share your writings,
performances, and/or creations with your
students.
• It will positively change the relationship that
you have with them. Guaranteed!

18. No Guarantees
• OK, well…maybe, there are no guarantees in
education.
• Yet, this teaching practice is a safe bet to
winning some of your unengaged learners.

19. Rapport Building
• Dennis Littky (2004), cofounder of the Big
Picture Company, a nonprofit educational
reform organization, discusses the importance
of incorporating the 3 R’s: relationships,
relevance, and rigor in the classroom.

20. Rapport Building cont.
• Also, the teacher has an opportunity to build a
better rapport with her class because students
value when teachers creatively instruct them
(whether they tell us or not).
• Furthermore, students notice and appreciate
when hard work goes into innovative lesson
planning.

21. Less Behavioral Problems
• Consequently, they began to see their teacher
from a positive vantage point.
• Less behavioral problems also a byproduct of
rapport building—a result that any instructor
would love to experience.
• Note: Sidebar conversations are often a result
of boredom and/or confusion.

22. Assignment Instructions Example
• See “Self-Introduction Performance” Handout,
p. 3

23. Outline Example
• See “Self-Introduction Outline” Handout, p. 4

24. Rubric Example
• See “Self-Introduction Speech Evaluation”
Handout, p. 5.

25. Published Writing Examples
• See “Survival via Creative Writing:
Remembering the Power of Story” Handout,
p. 6. (MCTE: eMET, Fall 2012).
• “I am You/You are I” Handouts, pp. 7-9 (A Young
Urban Professional Speaks, 2003).

26. Animoto Examples
• goo.gl/0zsp3k
• Nearly 30 self-created Animoto videos in the
following disciplines:
– English
– Math
– Science
– Social Studies
– Technology
– Writing

27. Questions
• Workshop Questions Web Link:
http://goo.gl/AzCOQC

28. Evaluations
Please evaluate this presentation with a word,
phrase, and/or paragraph.
http://goo.gl/Yd6Ix6