Several things will make you a more confident teacher.
First, good preparation is a lifeline, especially at the beginning. If you get stuck, at least you can go back to your lesson plan. You need a sound lesson plan with simple clear points, good examples, and workable learning activities.
Second, you'll teach more effectively if you have mastered your field. The old saying goes that you should know forty times more about your topic than you teach.
Third, you'll teach more effectively if you are enthusiastic about it. Being enthusiastic is easy if you're convinced that it is important and are still learning more about it yourself.
Fourth, there is no substitute for experience. With practice, you'll no longer be nervous about speaking in front of a group and be better able to anticipate how people will understand you.
Fifth, learn from your victories and defeats. You'll be more confident when you know that your lesson plans will work. That's why review is built into the process.
Sixth, it would be ideal to say, A good mentor will encourage you and give you confidence.
You can't expect this; people will want you to stand on your own feet. But a collaborative approach to teaching encourages you to seek that kind of support.
If you have never taught before, learning to teach is a major undertaking. Teaching is a huge field and this book can only explain some basics, so you will benefit from using other texts alongside this one. Teaching is also an art, and you will develop your own style and preferences with experience.
So how do you learn to teach?
Take advice. This book and your instructor will help you with pointers. For example, it's good advice to take time in preparation and use good notes. Don't be swayed by a brilliant teacher who can teach on short notice without notes.
Match your approach to how people learn. Some principles normally apply to all students. There are also different theories of learning, and each can offer you useful insights.
Match your approach to your audience. Some people and groups learn in very different ways from others. If you can identify how a particular student learns, you will better be able to teach him/her.
Observe how others teach and learn from them. Following a real example is called modeling. It’s a whole person approach to learning from people. You will probably want to emulate teaching styles that you have seen and that you like, no matter how anyone teaches you to teach. Believe it or not, you unconsciously learnt from every lesson you ever took (a) the kind of person your teacher was, and (b) the way your teacher taught it.
When you watch someone teach, ask yourself: What did you like? Why did some things work so well? How did they use time and place most efficiently? What was confusing or unhelpful? How would you improve on it?
Be on the lookout for creative ideas. Other teachers are always thinking up clearer or more interesting ways to communicate.
Teach lessons yourself. You need to get practice in front of a class. Teaching is something you do, not read. Textbooks alone cannot make you into a teacher no matter how good they are (even this one).
Evaluate yourself. You need to know what you did right and what didn’t work. You might also reflect on what you did, preferably in discussion with other trainee instructors. Ask what you have learnt about yourself as a person.
Go from easy tasks to harder tasks. Start with practice exercises such as a little public speaking or tutoring individuals, then progress to short, simple lessons that you teach to other trainee instructors. Later, you’ll eventually teach more complex lessons to real learners. That way, you'll succeed at something before taking on something harder.
Start with the left side of this table then move toward the asterisked items on the hard side. (You don't have to be able to do everything on the hard side for the Certificate IV.)
You won't need any preparation time or a mentor to briefly tell a friend a piece of simple well-known information that he/she wants to hear. But by doing that, you would have done most of the left side of the table, so you'd already be on the way. Now it's just a matter of setting increments so that you move toward the right side.
| Easy to teach | Difficult to teach | |
|---|---|---|
| Size of group | Individuals and very small groups | Large |
| Length of session | Short | Long |
| Amount of teaching | Public speaking (only expressing information) | Teaching (people have to learn something) |
| Location | Familiar and "safe" | Unfamiliar |
| Students' learning abilities | No learning difficulties | Learning difficulties |
| How well you know the students | Peers or people you know | Strangers |
| Behavior | Cooperative | Possibly unruly |
| Student motivation | High | Low |
| Amount of time for preparation | Enough | Not enough |
| You have help available | A mentor will help you | You get no help at all |
| Familiarity of content to you | Very familiar to you | New content that you must research during preparation |
| Familiarity of content to students | Had some previous exposure | Totally new |
| Your ability to anticipate what will happen | Easy | Difficult |
Your areas of expertise and the relevance of your qualifications change over time. Mature people develop expertise that is not represented in their existing qualifications. They are stretched
; into a different shape. However, some people lose some skills over time. As skills must be current, it is unwise to try to teach and assess them.
Brian graduated in the 1970s with a Master degree. He has not only been teaching and assessing, but has also kept his skills up to date. His field has changed so much that his formal qualification is no longer equivalent to the qualification presently required.
Brian's problem is that he must demonstrate that his knowledge and experience is up to date and suits the qualification that he is now teaching. This can be quite messy, as it involves listing a long series of Professional Development courses, as well as personal reading and teaching, and some practical experience.
Fiona has a different situation:
Fiona graduates with a degree in business and gets a job. She makes the adjustment and does well. She attends the professional development activities and the quality control meetings.
After a while, she is made responsible for several junior employees. She moves around in the company and learns several other positions.
When a senior management vacancy comes up, she applies for the position and gets it. Fiona does well at running the branch office and managing her staff, and is responsible for a substantial budget. She is involved in policy development and gives input to major budgetary decisions at company level.
At the end of the process, Fiona is not performing as a Bachelor level. In fact, she has forgotten some of the things she learned in that course. But she now has many other higher level skills.
Here’s another example.
Robert graduates from university and writes textbooks and training manuals in his field of expertise. He also contributes articles to various journals. As the field changes, he continually updates his skills. He takes interest in a new specialization and after a while is recognized as an expert.
At the end of the process, Robert is not performing as a recent graduate. He has forgotten some of his original university training, and some of the thinking in his field has changed so much that what he learned in his degree is now outdated. His greatest expertise is no longer represented in his paper qualifications, and is far more advanced than could be expected of a recent graduate.
In both Robert’s and Fiona’s cases, their actual expertise has changed substantially over time.
Schools are really there for the students, not to provide jobs for teachers. Reflect a student-focused approach to what you do. In one sense, the customer is always right, and dissatisfied students tend to leave.
Insitutions ask people to give feedback so the whole program can improve. In managing quality, it is part of your job to evaluate feedback from students and colleagues and act on it to improve the quality of your work. So make your students more satisfied than they are. Develop ways of evaluating what your institution does and build improvements into your practices.
Teaching is not about what you want to teach and expressing information, no matter how interesting it is to you or even how well you do it. Teaching is about what students need to learn and helping them learn it. You're there for the students.
Here are two teachers, both of whom were diligent in their duties and passionate about their subject. One is teacher-centered and the other is student-centered:
Ms. Bloggs loved giving lectures. She put hours into gathering huge amounts of information from the latest research on her specialized interests. She wrote detailed, polished notes (obviously for her next book), although most of the students didn't find them very helpful.
Her lectures were long and detailed, and she was careful to use the technical vocabulary precisely. She seldom allowed for questions, although she'd discuss her specialized field for hours with any students interested in it.
Ms. Bloggs was totally teacher-centered, putting her effort into expressing information regardless of whether or not students learned.
Melissa was quite different. Although she was enthusiastic about her field, she found out what students needed to learn. Her sessions simply covered the main points clearly and explained new terms and ideas in ordinary language.
During group discussions, she observed how well each student got each point and went over it again if they were stuck. She asked questions that stimulated discussion and made students think in new ways.
Although she never gushed, she made sure to encourage students to develop their own thinking on the topic, even if they didn't always agree with her.
Melissa was totally student-centered, making sure that students learned what they needed.
Moral of the story: What matters is not what you want to teach but what students learn. That's being student-centered.
Delivery
is not about a guy in a car with a hot pizza. Delivery
refers the means by which you communicate with students so that they learn. It includes groups in a classroom, on-the-job, on-line, correspondence, individual mentoring, or any other way of teaching. There are some Immutable Laws of Delivery.
You can be flexible in organizational structures, location, scheduling and communication methods.
Location is not restrictive either. Besides being on campus, it can be:
It can be either face to face, through distance learning, or though interactive electronic communications. Scheduling may also vary; it may be partly or all self paced, or tied to a work or campus schedule.
Use your imagination to teach in many different ways, because using only one or two ways will bore your students. Even if you are teaching face to face, you might not teach in a classroom situation. You might use:
Of course, many of these can be combined.
And then, even if you are in a classroom, the lecture or oral presentation is only one of many options. Consider the other possibilities, and ways that you can combine them:
You cannot use all possible delivery methods and learning activities. So how do you choose? That brings us to the Second, Third and Fourth Immutable Laws of Delivery.
The kind of delivery should suit what it is that students need to learn:
Those that involve students in speaking, questioning, answering, writing, doing, are more effective than those where you (as instructor) stand in front and perform.
How do you know that students even take notice of your lecture if you never stop for questions or discussion? In fact, some people have a personal rule that a lecture should never be longer than ten minutes. In a two hour class session, they use many use many other kinds of activities.
If students actually try putting the lesson into practice, they will learn more than just by hearing it or reading about it.
On the other hand, part of the problem is that most lecturers are pretty boring. Not many of them have a talent for giving inspiring and illuminating lectures.
People will learn more if you use a variety of appropriate methods, for several reasons.