Today we explore more teaching resources, with a focus on Teacher Toolkit. Successful teachers give their students emotional support: There are days when your students will need your emotional support more than a piece of information. Connecting to your students on an emotional level makes it more likely that they will listen to your counsel and take your advice to heart. Students need mentors as much as they need teachers. Successful teachers are comfortable with the unknown: It’s difficult to teach in an environment where you don’t know the future of your classroom budget, the involvement of your student’s parents, or the outcome of all your hard work. On a more philosophical level, educators who teach the higher grades are tasked with teaching students principles that have a lot of unknowns (i.e. physics). How comfortable are you with not having all the answers? Good teachers are able to function without everything tied up neatly in a bow. Successful teachers are not threatened by parent advocacy: Unfortunately, parents and teachers are sometimes threatened by one another. A teacher who is insecure will see parent advocacy as a threat. While there are plenty of over-involved helicopter parents waiting to point out a teacher’s mistakes, most parents just want what’s best for their child. Successful educators are confident in their abilities and not threatened when parents want to get into the classroom and make their opinions known. Good teachers also know they don’t have to follow what the parent recommends!
Reflect. John Dewey once said, “We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.” Be honest with yourself. Be mindful and make changes in the future. You can model the reflective process for your students as well. Teach them to evaluate. Breathe. Give yourself time. Cut yourself a break. Ask for help. Not everything will go as planned. Tap into your colleagues. Use the resources available to you. Be realistic. Be forgiving. Read more info on Teacher Guides.
Learning is not only for young people. If you don’t mind doing a bit of browsing there are also have many YouTube video instructors that can offer quick overviews on general computer know-how and specifics such as setting up a Facebook account or doing Skype calls. Using a computer can let you stay informed, share information, organize your schedule, do your banking, find and listen to your favorite music, watch old episodes of your favorite shows and films, the list goes on.Indeed, with all the resources and help available you may find yourself becoming a technical expert sooner than you think.
Since writing by hand is something that they are used to, get them a notebook specifically for writing down any steps they need to remember. If they get lost or forget how to do something, they can jog their memory from their own handwriting. A good website for senior learning is http://seniortechtutorials.com/.
Music teaching is hot this days, many people try to learn music, for various reasons. There are a few podcasts that focuses on teaching people about music and one of them is The Music Educator by Bill Stevens. Music is best learnt by doing, not by reading and writing. Make your lessons active and add to some energy to them! Even if you are teaching music theory there are ways to include practical activities. For younger children, games such as Magic Feet Follow the Beat present important elements of music theory in a fun way. This makes new words easy to learn. If you think back to your own time as a school pupil, I’m sure some of your most memorable classes were where you were not just sitting there. You weren’t staring at the pages of a textbook or copying notes down from the board. The classes where you had to move around and do something are more likely to stick in your head.
Tip of the day for music teachers : Meet with Student Leaders: Another great way to start the new school year is to meet with the student leaders of the upcoming class. This meeting can be either formal or informal, but either way the goal is to establish a positive relationship with the student body. Feel free to share ideas with the student leaders, or even brainstorm fun classroom activities.
You can listen to the The Music Educator podcast by using the app from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.themusiceducatorpodcast.android.music. You can learn more about Bill Steven by checking his website at https://www.4themusiceducator.com/.