Are you thinking of becoming a teacher? Or are you looking for ways to become more successful in your teaching career? Well, you should note that teaching is not that easy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. With patience and hard work, you can become a great teacher.
Luckily, there are countless strategies you can use to increase your success as a teacher and help your students succeed as well. Here are a dozen things successful teachers do.
1. Believe In Your Students’ Potential
A teacher’s success begins with the success of their students. Always have high expectations for your students. Believe in their potential to succeed and make sure you push them to their limits.
Believing in your students is one of the simplest but most powerful teaching methods. It also works when coaching in sports and in the workplace. Kids will do anything for a teacher who believes in them.
Even when they fail, motivate them to try again and to work harder. This strategy helps you to pull them out of their comfort zones. They can pursue success knowing that you are there to pick them up each time they fail.
2. Learn Everything You Can
Being very knowledgeable in your field of study is also a crucial stepping stone towards a successful teaching career. It’s true that even the most successful teachers don’t know everything. But, the more you know, the easier it will be to teach your students and to offer them prompt answers to their questions.
Learning never stops and that’s why, as a teacher, you need to feed your mind with as much information as it can take in. Remember that students always prefer consulting teachers who are known to possess in-depth knowledge about a specific field. Knowledge indicates authenticity.
3. Be Fun and Energetic
Did you know that most students are more comfortable sharing their academic problems with humorous and enthusiastic teachers rather than the grumpy and “ever-serious” ones? Yes! The way you carry yourself greatly determines your approachability.
Make a point of smiling each time you converse with your students, crack a joke or two and so on. This helps to ease any tension or fear that the students may be feeling when approaching you for help.
4. Take Risks
They say, “No Risk, No Reward!” Taking risks plays a crucial part in a person’s success. Your students watch and observe all your moves. Therefore, if you take risks by trying new things every once in a while, they’ll also be confident enough do the same.
An environment that allows for expression and some risk-taking pushes students to burst out of their bubbles. You’ll effectively encourage students to explore the unknown, nurturing their risk-taking skills and eventual success.
5. Be Creative and Think Outside The Box
The strategies you use to pass on information to your students need to be creative in a way that captures the attention of your classroom. Strive to make each learning lesson a thrilling one for your students. This not only makes their learning experience fun but also ensures that they are fully engaged during each class and always eager for the next one.
6. Be Consistent and Decisive
To be successful at teaching, you need to be coherent and resolute. If you say something, stick to it! If you say you are going to do something, make sure you see it through! If you set rules, stand firmly by them! Avoid making exceptions or playing favorites.
7. Always Be Up-To-Date
A successful teacher knows how important it is to be abreast with the latest news, educational advancements, technology and so on. Sharing this information with your students helps you to keep them updated too. In turn, this adds value to the learning experience and helps students succeed.
Sharing new knowledge pushes students to research and learn more about things that happen beyond the confines of their classroom. They might also do more outside of school hours, boosting knowledge instead of forgetting (e.g. see summer learning loss).
By incorporating technology into lessons and assignments, you can provide students with more learning resources and support personalized learning. For example, students can use math apps to practice basic math skills, language learning apps to learn a new language, or educational games to learn about certain subjects.
8. Communicate
Communication is a powerful learning tool. Whether it’s with a student or with their parent, dialog helps you to pass critical information and recommendations that may be crucial to the student’s success.
Communication is a make-or-break skill. Communicating well helps you form closer relationships, bring cohesion to teams, and take on leadership roles.
Mallory
To help students succeed, getting their attention is a basic step. Students who aren’t listening aren’t learning what they need for academic success. Communicating well, especially by reinforcing key points and take-away messages, is the next step. Effective communication helps students to really learn and retain critical information.
Adjust your pace and style and even your body language. Be interesting to help to keep your students captivated and in a learning state.
9. Listen and Show Empathy
Failing an exam does not always mean that the student failed to read for it. Sometimes, it may be due to external factors. That’s why successful teachers always take their time to listen and to advise their students.
Always treat each pupil with sensitivity, as if they’re your own child. That way, they’ll always confide in you in case something is deterring their success in class.
10. Provide Engaging Study Materials
To support student success, provide relevant, engaging study materials that reinforce and expand their learning. But avoid overloading them with homework and assignments because it may exhaust their minds, hence slowing learning.
Strategies you can use to provide students with relevant, engaging study materials include:
- Use authentic materials: Authentic materials are real-world resources that are related to the subject matter being studied. These can include news articles, videos, podcasts, or other media that students can use to learn about the topic in a more authentic and engaging way.
- Curate a library of resources: Teachers can create a digital or physical library of resources that students can access for self-study or reference. This can include textbooks, online articles, videos, and other materials that are relevant to the subject matter being studied.
- Use multimedia resources: Incorporating multimedia resources such as videos, podcasts, or interactive games can help make learning more engaging and interactive for students.
- Provide personalized materials: By considering the individual needs and interests of your students, you can create personalized learning materials that are tailored to their specific learning goals and preferences.
- Encourage students to create their own materials: Students can create their own study materials by summarizing key concepts, creating mind maps, or creating flashcards or other review materials. This can help them better understand and retain the material.
Students may be motivated to learn more about a topic while lacking the direction and resources to do it well. Successful teachers allow students to reach their full learning potential by providing avenues to go beyond the basic curriculum.
11. Be Observant
To be successful at teaching, you need to observe all your students individually, separating their strengths from their weaknesses. This will help you to tailor strategies to help them harness their strengths and overcome their weaknesses.
To set appropriately high expectations, you first need a realistic assessment of where the class and individual students are at. Early testing and questioning is a good way to establish benchmark levels of knowledge and skill development.
12. Set Goals With Your Students
As mentioned already, a teacher’s success is mostly determined by the success of their students. Therefore, you need to set goals and objectives with your students. After that, work with them towards achieving these goals together as a team.
