Beginning Teachers-some tips for you

Salam and hi,

I believe the first five years of a beginning teacher's career is the most important. This is the period of time when you try to put your theory into practice and need to learn the ropes to become a good teacher (bruises, hard knocks, aha!, oic, bumps, included )Here's my two cents worth of what beginning teaches should know:

1.Know your content
if you are an English teacher, by all means be equipped with the relevant knowledge and skills. Get the content correct and to do this you must invest in some good grammar and reference books. Use the BISP allowance wisely. Get a good, current dictionary not an old dictionary you used in college please! If you need to look up a grammar point, do so. Do not assume you know everything. Build a strong knowledge base on you subject matter and this will serve you well when the need arises. Remember, students will be able to sense if you are out of depth.

2. Be resourceful
Start building your resource books,reference books, cds, lesson plans etc. Get to know the senior teaches and learn from them. Look out for ESL conferences and make an effort to attend them. You will develop your confidence and networking too.

3. Be Proactive
Find out early who or what you need. Show some initiative. Network with senior teachers and befriend the office staff. Share materials and, depending on the culture you have in your school, some teachers will willingly hand over their handouts and lesson plans to help a first year teacher. Collegiality will help you a long way.

4. Know Your School's Processes
You have to know the bureaucracy in your school. Find out the essential services and resources you need such as resources like photocopying, the library and TVs/dvd players, the booking system etc..

5. Be organised
Make your job more manageable by oranising your work. Clear all that clutter on your table. Deadlines need to be met so you need to differentiate between what is urgent and what is important. There's nothing wrong in keeping a 'to do' list. It helps!If you develop this habit in your first year of teaching, you will find it something natural to do.

6. Vary Your Instructional Techniques
Vary the way you teach so that your students will learn in a variety of ways too. By all means use the blackboard,lecture a little, but you knwo that teaching needs to be so much more than just chalk’n’talk. Try new approaches and be surprised with the results. Teaching is all about trial and error . What works for one class may not work for another. So be adventurous (after considering the pedagogical aspects of course). Dare to teach what you believe will work and accept students' feedback readily.

7. Have a sense of humour
You create the climate in the classroom! Your attitude directly influences your students. Be it a headache you're experiencing, a cold etc. your students will behave accordingly. Try not to be moody because more often than not it spoils the class. Show enthusiasm and show your students that you enjoy teaching English.

Finally, be positive! Happy Teaching!