Teaching is not just about delivering lectures to make money, it’s more than that. Teachers work hard to shape future generations into successful individuals by helping them learn. As a teacher, you would want all your students to get the top exam grades to make a better future for themselves. However, reaching this goal isn’t easy, it requires you to use some methods while teaching.
So these are the best practices to enhance your students’ learning and give them a better chance at success.
Set Your Expectations High
On one extreme, teachers start demanding impossible things from their students. Meanwhile, on the other extreme end, teachers have no hopes and expectations from their students. However, both of these approaches are harmful and will make your students want to want up. Students will not want to work towards your impractical goals because they are simply impossible to achieve. Contrarily, they will also stop working hard when you expect nothing or something mediocre from them.
Your expectations have a lot of influence over the students and hence you should keep them high. This will act as a push to motivate students to work harder and improve their talents. Moreover, remember them praise your students’ efforts instead of just demanding results. This is because your goal is to make them work harder and not everyone reaches their goals at the same pace. However, telling them that ‘you are doing a great job’ will help them know that their efforts count and mean something.
The Daily Fives
Classes can feel boring for students when you just make it about giving lectures on one topic to another. However, when you add some daily rituals and activities to this mixture, it creates a better learning experience. The best time to practice these rituals is at the end and beginning of your class. This will help students prepare themselves to start learning and then end the process by the end of the learning period.
So when you enter the class, make the students spend the first five minutes doing the daily activity such as taking out their learning materials or repeating prayers or affirmations. In the last 5 minutes of your teaching session, your students can pack their things or share their feedback about the topic or the day’s learning session. In this way, they would not feel bored or distract themselves with other activities and would cooperate with the substitute teacher to follow this same routine.
Treat Them Individually
Although this can be hard when you teach around a hundred students from different classes and sections, but is also equally important for students’ growth. Most school and university teachers make the mistake of treating an entire group of students as a single unit because it’s easier. Well, it is going to feel easier in the short run but you will later find your students asking others to ‘do my online exam’ because they haven’t learned much in your class.
On the other hand, if you start treating all the students as individuals, they would show significant progress in all areas. So start noticing each of your students; the loud ones, the quiet ones and the ones in between. Moreover, check on them every now and then in terms of how they are doing in their studies as well as their overall behavior. Students can tell what you feel about them so avoid being indifferent and stay away from negative feelings.
Stay Original and Helpful
No, you do not have to act differently in front of your students to set a good example for them. This is another misconception among teachers which makes students feel distant from them. Staying natural and transparent is the best way to lead students through your own example to help them learn by observing you. Although it can be hard to find balance but originality, with a touch or formal and assertive attitude is the best approach to deal with students.
Another great way to help students learn better and succeed is to do your best to help them out. These students depend on you not just for learning the things in their syllabus but also for exploring their potential and finding their way through different areas of life. Your help and guidance can save them from tons of mistakes and become the best versions of themselves. So instead of maintaining a robotic attitude towards your students, stay natural and help them as much as you can.
Be Creative
Most students are unable to learn in class because their class feels boring and they find it hard to feel interested in what the teaching is saying. Well, who said lectures have to be boring and only given using the same methods? Teaching requires creativity to be effective and hence, one of the best ways to keep students engaged is to think outside the box. They are more like to remember and feel interested enough to dig deeper into concepts if you use different teaching methods such as debates, role-playing, and fun games.
There are tons of ways to learn and not just by reading books and listening to lectures from teachers. In fact, these learning methods are passive and do not work as good as the other methods. For example, you could dedicate a paragraph to each student and ask them to go through it and explain it to the entire class. You should also have discussions with other teachers, attend workshops or even take teaching courses to discuss and learn teaching methods that are more fun and effective.
On a Concluding Note:
In-person and online classes help students learn not just the content of their syllabus but about tons of other aspects of life. A good teacher can help their students become knowledgeable, successful in their careers and overall smart and talented human beings. Hence, start using these tactics while teaching and share them with your colleagues to help your students learn better and enjoy the process.
