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Permission to reprint is granted with proper
attribution (see last paragraph). 803 words.
8 Steps to Teaching Effectively:
It May Not be Disneyland, but It Sure is Fun
By Stan Cody, author, Teaching Out of the Box
Think of the teacher you most loved and enjoyed when you
were an elementary school student. What made that teacher so wonderful? Can
you identify the traits that endeared him or her to you and the rest of the
class?
I’m going to venture a guess. Your favorite teacher was
someone who wasn’t afraid to relax with the students in the classroom. The
teacher was very comfortable laughing, participating and enjoying activities
with the class. These qualities reside in the very heart of the secret to
success as a teacher. When you get students to learn and enjoy as they
learn, you’ve done it.
Here’s how you achieve the
twin goals of getting students to learn and to enjoy learning:
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Relax and have fun with your
students. Remember all the fun things your favorite teacher did when
you were in class. If it was fun then, it will be fun now.
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Look for laugh matter. A
humorous tale, a cute joke (non-ethnic, non-racial and completely harmless
to everyone), a funny thing you or someone in your family did this morning
or yesterday, it doesn’t matter. Laughter is a magnificent ice breaker.
Get your students to laugh with you and they’re yours.
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Leave your personal concerns
at home, no matter how great or small they may be. You might have to
become an actor to do this (actually, celebrity actors do it quite well),
to keep laughing and enjoying your students, but do it. Your students
didn’t ask for your problems and your district isn’t paying for them.
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If you don’t feel well, stay
home. Don’t save your sick days for retirement or some other purpose.
One day of poor teaching can kill 100 days of good rapport you’ve
developed. On the other hand, if stress is creating tension as you teach,
do take a “mental health day” now and then. Be good to yourself.
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See yourself as performing
on a stage. It’s your stage and you’re on it from the moment you step
onto that school campus until the moment you leave. Be at your very, very
best.
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Be a friend to your
students. Smile often. Your students are your children when they are
with you. Treat them with respect, encourage their creativity and have fun
with them. I loved having fun with my students and it appears, from the
feelings many of them have expressed over the years, that fun was the key
ingredient to their learning. Take this as a very strong clue: Fun, fun,
fun.
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Do the unexpected in class.
Wear a funny hat. Wear a shirt with a sleeve cut out. Walk on crutches.
Put a chair on your desk and teach from the back of the room. If you are
right-handed, write left-handed on the chalkboard and laugh with the
students at your total lack of ambidexterity. Don’t be the same old
stick-in-the-mud type of boring teacher any more. You can get your
students to look forward to your class by doing crazy things that support
the lesson of the day.
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Continually encourage creativity. It is so
important. In many ways, your students may be more creative than you. They
have no pre-conceived limitations. They are still children and they love
to explore. When you foster creativity, new talent emerges. Sometimes
children discover things about themselves that set the direction of their
lives and their future careers.
These are simple words of wisdom that are so very easy and
fun to do. They can be applied from kindergarten to the senior year in high
school and further up the education ladder. (Really. Must a college
professor be dry and boring?)
In my new career as a consultant to faculties, I’m still
meeting dull teachers who have little interest in making learning fun. The
subject is too serious, they say. Or, I’m a serious type of person. To which
I say: Loosen up. In every class, students need the tension barrier (which
can be fear, poor self image, low expectations or any number of preconceived
factors) broken up by laughter, fun and recognition, in order to move beyond
it into the learning mode. It’s the teacher’s job to get them beyond that
defeating tension barrier. And the only way to do it is to have fun with
teaching and with your students.
Make it a point to laugh every day, many times, with your
students. The side benefit? It keeps you young!
Stan Cody had fun as a teacher for 33 years in Southern
California’s public schools. The author of Teaching Out of the Box
(available at Amazon.com),
he can be reached at
stan@stancody.com or through his website, stancody.com.
Contact Stan Cody's promotion & publicity team:
Email or
call 714 228-1101 (Wordpix Promotions)
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