27 things teachers need to know about their students, as told by students themselves

1.  Students often know more than they let on, and are either too tired, or scared to answer hard questions.

2.  They will try and be on their phone as much as possible, they want to do fun things like labs etc.

3. A lot of students today are rude but there are still a lot that are nice, also most students are on there phones (or Chromebooks) most of the time when teachers are teaching so be wary of students not paying attention.

4. The students of today are basically the same as last year, when I was in 8th grade. 

5. We have busy schedules.

6. I have really bad anxiety and I get stressed out really easily and I have a lot of anxiety when I am on the spot.

7. They we are pretty awesome.

8. We are not as crazy as we seem.

9. Students aren’t always ready to learn and still needs time.

10. Each student works at their own pace, and there’s always new trends.

11. Teachers need to better know and understand a student’s strengths, weaknesses, and passions (things they are intrigued about, etc.) in order to build a more comfortable, exciting learning environment for them.

12. We like music and partners to work with.

13. I am tired.

14. A lot of students are tired because of a lot of the other activities they have to do after school or because of how late they stay up.

15. That we like to be told descriptive directions so we know what to do.

16. We just want to live our lives.

17. Kids like to be disrespectful and not listen to directions.

18. Know who our friends are so that we don’t sit them next to them. They should know a class’ general interests so that their lessons can be fun. If they have anything like bad vision or dyslexia or something else that prohibits them from learning.

19. If there’s a trend everyone talks about it.

20. It’s hard to focus.  

21. If someone’s hand isn’t up, don’t call them. They aren’t mentally prepared and might get extremely anxious.

22. Students can be really mean, and stubborn.  So if you keep a closer look and discipline them that would maybe help.

23. We don’t like to be rushed, and we need a lot of clarification on certain topics. We would rather do interactive projects and experiments other than just write something on paper.

24. Teachers need to know about our background such as hobbies and life experiences. This is helpful to have good conversations with students and to create positive relationships with students.

25. They probably won’t listen all the time, they want to be treated like adults, they only know and need to know so much.

26. Students know a lot about the internet and can usually figure things out easily which makes it easier for them to play games and do things with their chromebooks.

27. We are learning different subjects at once and it’s hard to focus on one.