Affirming Returning Adult Student Experiences

Video Transcript

"The next thing that you want to do with returning students is affirm experience. Traditionally, with returning students, they tend to have a lot of anxiety about the fact that they are older, and returning to school. And, they really are quite behind in how much they need to learn, or relearn, especially when they look around the classroom and see the twenty year olds, or the nineteen year olds, and realize that those students are where, you know, they're learning the same amounts of material, but that student is twenty and this student is forty or fifty. But, I think it's real important that you affirm to the students, the returning students how valuable their life experience is. Whether it's life experience raising a family, whether its job experience that that counts for something, and stress how important that is. Also, I think it's real important that it's clear that these students have anxiety about returning to the classroom, and all of the things that they don't know, which might tend to make them possibly more defensive. So, I think it's real important that you allow them to share that information. Allow them to talk about their anxieties and fears about how much they don't know, at their age, and stage in the game."