Section 1: Academic Achievement - National Center for School ...

them eat in class. Additional reasons were because the teacher gave them homework or didn’t
give them homework. That depended on whether the student liked homework or didn’t. The
same held true for reasons why students didn’t like their teachers. They yelled, they gave
homework, they had to miss recess. Those answers were not a surprise. The group of
students I surveyed struggled with identifying overall negative teacher experiences. They all
had days/parts of days where they may not have liked their teachers, but none of them could
identify a teacher or characteristics of a teacher they didn’t like. Was this because they were
younger students and had access to a limited number of teachers? Was this because some of
these kids were younger and they couldn’t remember what happened back in first grade? Was
this because our school has a good staff and kids feel comfortable and welcome? Was this
because they weren’t going to rat out another teacher to me? Or was this because I was
asking for information that was developmentally beyond them? My guess would be the latter,
but on the other hand, many of us are capable of remembering the really negative experiences
in our lives and some can go back to ages fours and five. Therefore, I might also conclude
that the students I surveyed had mostly positive experiences with teachers.
However, when I asked the students to tell me what makes the good students good and the
bad students bad they had an easier time answering that one. I assumed their answers would
be on an academic level, (good reader, good at math, knows all the answers, etc.) but once
again I was surprised by their responses. The majority of their answers lead to social reasons.
They help me, they listen, they turn in their homework, they are nice to me, and they are
funny and make me laugh.
As I was giving the survey I asked the kids to be honest in their responses and I explained the
research project. Now it is possible some of the answers were given just to please “the
teacher”, but I saw my name mentioned more than once on a few of the questions getting at
the negative aspects of the school environment which lead me to believe that a least some of
the students were being honest.
As I reviewed the surveys and thought back to my research question, I realized that I had
addressed classroom/ school community, peer and staff relationships, but the first survey had
not accessed any data on instructional strategies. I had some idea of what instructional
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