I have had countless discussions lately with some of the newer teachers around me about some general concepts. This is just a random list of a few of the suggestions I have passed along to some of them that might be helpful to you or someone you know in some way. And it comes you way free of charge.
- Choose your battles
- Bite your tongue
- When someone offers you unsolicited advice, give them the impression that you are listening
- When someone offers you unsolicited advice, listen to them and apply the advice as quickly as possible
- Most unsolicited teaching advice is given because of a perceived urgent deficiency in your teaching
- When talking with students about negative behaviors, don’t chase other adults away, they could be used to validate your side of the story if the student or students gang up on you
- Talk less
- Only fix one problem at a time
- Keep students engaged as much as possible
- Think before you speak
- Think twice before you discipline
- Establish a consistent routine and stick with it
- Finding faults without providing solutions is complaining; and nobody likes a constant complainer
- Just because something is in black and white doesn’t mean it is going to stay that way
- Just because someone is in your email inbox doesn’t mean it is going to stay that way
- Just because someone overheard someone say it doesn’t mean it is going to stay that way
- You need to teach fundamental technique before you can presume to teach musicality
- Keep reviewing the fundamentals
- Most performance problems kids have stem from fundamental problems
- Control your classroom
- Practice “the look”
- Practice getting a classroom silent armed only with “the look”
- Shut up and teach
- Many problems can be ironed out with more repetition
- Prioritize your time
- Turn the ringer off
- Kill your cell phone while you are teaching — completely
- Get out of debt as fast as possible
- Spend less than you make
- Don’t save for retirement at 8% compounded annually when you are still borrowing money at 20% compounded daily (credit)
- Don’t save for retirement at 8% compounded annually when you are still borrowing money at 5.5% compounded monthly (loans)
- Use cash
- Pay your bills on time (nothing says “good morning” quite like a 6:30am gym shower)
- Set multiple alarm clocks
- Don’t check your email first thing in the morning
- Don’t check your email right before you leave school
- Be friendly to office staff
- Say or wave hello to your principal every day if possible
- Don’t gossip about students
- Don’t gossip about teachers
- Don’t gossip about administrators
- Ask for help
- Get to know the parents of your students
- Communicate better
- Videotape yourself teaching and watch it with an unbiased eye
- Don’t try to be friends with the students
- Don’t try to be enemies with the students
- Relate with the students as you would with any other person — respectfully
- Establish systems and routines for repetitive paperwork tasks (assign a student to take attendance each day, etc.)
- Don’t do anything simply because you think other people expect it or because you don’t want to let them down
Visited 5 times, 1 visit(s) today
"Videotape yourself teaching and watch it with an unbiased eye" – Wow! I think that's a great idea for improving ones efficiency. Assessing your own capabilities in the job you are in is very important for getting success. Even if there are certain weird points at the beginning of the list that I could not understand much, this list should be helpful for teachers irrespective of the institutions they are teaching in.
Good work and contains useful information thank you for this good information