During my time teaching in the public education system, I've gathered little tidbits of teacher tips.
Here are some of them!
I think that an effective teacher isn't one that gives all their knowledge and information to their students.
It's a teacher who can inspire the students to make those discoveries and own their knowledge.
The teacher must have confidence that their students can learn and grow. Having high expectations is crucial. If you don't believe in them, it will show and have a negative impact on the students. We want them to have high expectations for themselves and be confident that they can learn the material. We need to be their ally and support them.
The teacher has to set the students up for success. Having high expectations is great, but they need your help getting there. Instructional scaffolding is given to students to guide them toward success. This includes strategies such as providing and activating prior knowledge, modeling, thinking out loud as if you were the student tackling an issue, prompting, taking into account the various learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) and planning for it, presenting easier tasks before a more difficult one, providing problem solving skills, etc. Part of scaffolding is to ween the students from these strategies so that they can do it for themselves. When you pile a bunch of little successes, students become confident and start believing in themselves. They are ready for a harder task and less scaffolding. Without any scaffolding, every task may seem like a "test", in which case, if the student doesn't pass, they have a sense of failure. Pile on many failed tests and they start to doubt themselves. Scaffolding is like a safety net that you eventually take away.
Expect mistakes and have patience. This was really difficult for me when I started teaching. Mistakes (or not 'getting it') are part of the learning process and once you truly believe that, it won't be hard to be patient. The student should feel safe to make mistakes and trust that you're there to help them discover ways to solve the problem.
Ultimately, I want the students to be inspired to learn more.
"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." - William Butler Yeats
So, let's all be blow torches!!!!