There are THREE basic themes that I am confident you will agree are simple and necessary to make this an enjoyable, interesting, and successful year.  Please read them and think about the behavioral choices you will make this year that will reflect your understanding and support of these guidelines.

1.  Respect:
Respect people, property, and the educational process.

Demonstrate this by treating yourself and others, including peers and instructors in an appropriate manner.  Use appropriately supportive language and encourage others to do the same.  If your behavior interferes with the learning process, you will need to make better choices.   We’re working to create a pleasant learning environment, and it would be disrespectful to both your instructor and your instructor’s property to deface or damage things in the classroom.

Use common sense, make good decisions, and Choose* behaviors with positive consequences.

With that to guide you, we shouldn’t have to have a rule for every little issue.

For example, I shouldn’t have to explicitly say,
"NO CELL PHONES"
because receiving a call (or checking your phone) during class
would be disrespectful , distracting, and downright rude, actually).

2.  Responsibility:
Be responsible for the choices you make.  

If you make good choices (those that contribute to making the class as positive an experience as it can be), great!  If you make poor choices, accept responsibility for those choices, learn from the consequences, and make better choices in the future.  Not everything that doesn’t go exactly as you would like it is “unfair”.   Invoking that phrase usually indicates an unhappiness with a particular outcome, but part of being a responsible adult is learning to deal with setbacks, such as poor results on quizzes, tests or homework, and instead of looking to place blame on an unfair universe, seeking ways to insure better outcomes in the future.

You and I will be working closely together and we are both responsible for making this a successful learning experience.  With hard work on both our parts, this will be a great year.

3.  Results:
We share a mutual goal:  As successful a Spanish learning experience as possible this year.  

Let’s work together to make this happen, and we’ll all be happy with the results.  If you have questions, concerns, complaints, or suggestions that would result in a better learning experience, be sure to communicate with me.  Your grades should accurately reflect your mastery of the material.  If this isn’t the case, we’ll work together to find out what we can do to change this!

If you need more specifics, click on the links above . . .

Contacting Señor Warren

Phone: 914-861-9441 x 243 (voice mail)
email:

 

* ¡Hola! That's right. The CHOICE is yours. We're talking FREE WILL here, muchach@s. CHOOSE those actions which will result in POSITIVE CONSEQUENCES (such as increased knowledge and an unblemished reputation). Why go to the DARK SIDE and make choices that will result in unhappiness and less learning for everyone?  Use your energy for positive gain, not for thinking up hollow excuses for having made poor choices.