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Gaining Respect From Your Students

What is in the best interest of your class?

As adult educators, we feel we need to know more than our students because we are the instructors: the teachers and the models. We need to demonstrate this confidence. However this attitude may create pressure, rejection, or rebellion in your experienced students.

In the Trades and Hospitality Industry class, we will have students with a variety of ages and backgrounds. Some may know some of the skills better than we do. However we don't want our students not to-follow our instructions and stop listening to us because they think they know more than we do. What can we do in this situation?   

  

I had an interesting experience when I opened the local golf course lounge. I hired a 55 years old cook from Toronto who had just moved on the island after his divorce. I explained to him who his co-workers would be and asked him to be a mentor to them. I had seven high school students as kitchen helpers who were my apprentices from their high school cafeteria class.  Two mid-20's cooks were my original staff. They had already worked with me for a couple of years. I also employed a 40 year old apprentice cook, who wanted to change his career and became a restaurateur.

 It was a brand new restaurant so that the menu items were new to everybody at this point. All the staff were starting at the same place, but they came from various stages of their careers and were different ages. The young workers followed my instructions easily and helped each other. They were able to start cooking the menu items within one week, although I had to keep my eyes on them all the time.  The 55 years old worker refused to learn my way because he believed he knew better than me. The 40 year old man had a passion, but he was slow because everything was new to him. He had to learn not only the menu, but also the basic cooking methods. 

From the beginning, I had a tough time gaining the 55 years old cook’s respect. I was a young, female, Japanese immigrant, boss to him. He was 55 years old, experienced,  male, who had a background as a five stars hotel line cook for over 20 years. However I had to choose my cooking methods for everybody, not only for the professional and experienced chef. My focus was a food safe, work safe and economically-run restaurant.

This cook kept refusing to run my kitchen the way I wanted. So I followed his advice and let him run it the way he wanted. I stopped teaming him up with other staff and let him work alone. It ended up I had to let him go because he was not suited to my business. After he left I finally had balance back in the work place.

I learned how difficult it was to put workers of mixed backgrounds and ages workers together as co-workers. I had a tough time making a schedule and I could not figure out the perfect balance. In time, I started hiring non-experience staff and training them the way I wanted. This was cheaper as it cost me more money and time to retrain staff who had their own strong beliefs on how things should be done.

Of course, as instructors, we cannot give up or ask our students to leave the classroom. However, I could learn from my mistakes in this incident.

 

“Who you are to them must speak louder than the actual words you use. In other words, the presence of your character should speak before you even utter your first word. How you walk, look, stand, dress, act, speak, respond, and even smell when you enter your school always should produce the response, "I want that." Or, at the very least, it should say, "She's different." (Joe Martin., The Educator Motivator Teachers Must Earn Students' Respect, Education world) http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/columnists/martin/martin011.shtml

When I look back at myself then, I realize I was acting no-confidence, modesty, and chaordic because I had to run my main restaurant with other 40 employees. I was young, female, and an immigrants. I didn't take all this into account and consider how to gain my employee's respect.

“ So, what is in the best interest for your class?”

My answer is that, as an instructor, I want to pass my knowledge on to “all” my students, as much as I can. If so, I have to make sure that every student listens to me and does not refuse to learn from me.

My challenge as an adult educator will be to gain respect from my students. I fixed the balance of my restaurant by removing the difficult character in my drama. However I cannot use this solution in the filed of adult education. Without gaining the respect of the students, I can not perform my role in the classroom to the best of my ability. 

    

“Long gone are the days when a teacher's presence alone demanded respect -- from students as well as their parents. Today, in a society where good morals are on the decline and self-centeredness is on the incline, we can't afford to educate students the way our teachers did back in the day. We have to get respect the hard way -- we have to earn it.” (Joe Martin., The Educator Motivator Teachers Must Earn Students' Respect, Education world) 

 I have to earn the respect!

Resources:
 
Joe Martin., The Educator Motivator Teachers Must Earn Stuents'Respect  Education world http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/columnists/martin/martin011.shtml