Teacher Psychology: I found that part of my success as a freshman was in understanding how my teachers worked. Call it brown-nosing, but if you take a few minutes to analyze each teacher, you will be able to anticipate pop quizzes and find ways to make them like you.
Figure out how they grade as soon as you can. Look at the syllabus, and for the first few weeks see if they just skimmed over your work or took the time to grade it. Figure out what they don't like, and even if you disagree with them, don't argue about it. Something key in getting 'A's is to DO WHAT THE TEACHER WANTS. If they have a thing against doing math work horizontally, then by all means, work vertically. You are allowed to have an opinion, but debating your English teacher on a nuance of grammer and repeating the use of what you think is correct may earn you a lower grade than you deserve because of bias.
The next part of being successful in a teacher's class is to suck up, but just a little bit. You don't have to bake them cookies on their birthday, but if they mention it is their anniversary or whatever, be nice and say something. Just having a non-negative attitude towards them (at least during class, afterwards you can say whatever the hell you want about them) will help you greatly, and acting interested in their life earns major brownie points. Don't overdo the niceness though, because some teachers hate suckups and will cut them down. Figure out who those teachers are by watching the suckups in your class and how the teacher treats them.
If being a kissass is appalling to you, then at the very least act interested. In my Honors English class, one of my friends hated the teacher. She slouched in her desk all the time, passed notes obviously, and talked all the way through the lectures. Her attitude was completely disinterested in the class material and was actually very rude, so when progress reports came around, she had a 'D' in participation. I hated the teacher as well, but I pretended that when she was going on about her life story and how smart she was that it was interesting. Even though I didn't participate a whole lot in class discussions, I still had an 'A' in participation. In that class, participation was 20% of your grade, so just looking like you are paying attention can cinch your grade.
Extra-credit fiends get shot down by teachers. Don't beg for an extra worksheet or offer to write another paper. Teachers have a lot to grade and will usually not let a student impose extra things to grade upon them. Get your work done right the first time so that you won't find yourself in that position.
If the teacher has a website where they post homework, use it. Look up not only the work for your class, but for the other classes that the teacher instructs. If the teacher is collecting a major research paper from their junior American History class on a Monday, then chances are that you will have a reduced workload from that class for a week because they will be grading like mad. This, of course, is very nice to know.
One situation I mentioned earlier is the 4.0 bias. An unfair aspect of high school politics but one that can be made to work for you is that of having a 4.0 GPA first semester of your freshman year. In the local newspaper, there is an honor roll of students that have 4.0s and then the students with 3.2 and above. Thus the students that are on their way to becoming valedictorians are made known, and all of the teachers in the school know who they teach that has a 4.0 and who doesn't. Whether you do A-quality work or not tends to be irrelevant after you have a 4.0, because many teachers don't want to have the reputation of ruining the student's perfect grades, especially in a community like mine where lawsuits against the district are thrown around liberally. When this factors into the fact that the teachers are also biased towards you and believe you are doing excellent work no matter what, you have secured an 'A' from them and may not have even earned it. For example, in PE this year, a friend and I did similarly on the fitness tests and demonstrated pretty much the same attitude towards the class. The only difference was that I had a 4.0 from the first semester, and she had a 3.95. 3.95 and 3.2 on the honor roll look exactly the same to teachers, and they tend not to give these students any special consideration. At the end of the class, I ended up with another 'A' and my friend had a 'B+'. Coincidence? I think not. So while this is not fair to anybody without a 4.0 GPA, it is further incentive to get one, especially during the first semester of each year.
Don't sleep in class, be nice to your teachers, study their habits and opinions, and maintaining a 4.0 will not be hard. |
