Learning continues from the womb to the tomb, and teachers are the torch-bearers in this journey. They influence young minds to achieve brilliance and help them realises their true potential. A good teacher shapes future citizens and inspires them to recognise their abilities. In a nutshell, all you teachers build the future.
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To carry out such an enormous responsibility, some teaching skills come in handy. But what are the essential teaching skills a new age teacher should have? We have it all sorted for all the future generations of teachers. A combination of these abilities is what makes a good teacher. Moreover, given below are some brilliant teaching skills to put in your resume and stand out.
What are teaching skills?
The simplest definition of teaching skills describes them as a bunch of central and supportive teaching skills. Developing these competencies help a teacher to command a class, build rapport with students and fulfil their goal as an educator.
These skills shape up a good teacher and fall among the most desirable qualities that are sought after by an employer. More importantly, you need them to make a difference to students and the entire teaching domain in general.
If you wish to become a teacher and touch lives, we have a list of teaching skills to develop:
#1 Communication skills
#2 Knowledge of Subject Matter
#3 Critical thinking skills
#4 Creative skills
#5 Skills of empowerment
#6 Motivational skills
#7 The ability to teach
#8 Organisational skills
#9 Mentoring skills
#10 Leadership skills
#11 Collaborative skills
#12 Effortless time management skills
#13 Develops adaptability
#14 Inculcate patience
#15 Passion for teaching
Here is how you can flawlessly discharge your teaching responsibilities with these important skills.
1. Communication Skills
Teaching involves communicating knowledge. This art & science is based on good communication skills. A teacher transfers knowledge to her students by using various modes of communication. Various verbal and non-verbal methods of communicating with students, parents, and school staff have proven effective in various circumstances. Therefore, the most essential teaching skill is the ability to communicate and make yourself heard.
Out of all the various qualities, a teacher should necessarily develop the following abilities to communicate properly:
- Good body language
- Clarity of voice
- Listening
- Written communication
- Voice modulation
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Apart from oratory skills, writing makes for a notable part of classroom communication. Therefore, good, legible, and clear handwriting are components of blackboard teaching skills. Pair them up with your communication gravitas and knowledge of your subject matter, to arrest your classroom.
As a teacher, you ought to upskill yourself to keep up with the modern ways to communicate and conduct the teaching-learning process.
Besides communicating with students, an effective teacher timely conveys their ward's progress to the parents or the guardian. A one-on-one parent-teacher meeting, proper email or telephonic interactions are potent tools to discuss a student's progress. A teacher's careful analysis and encouraging demeanour promote a better understanding between the school and the parents, thus communicating the expectation from a student.
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2. Knowledge of Subject Matter
Whether you are a primary teacher (PRT), a trained graduate teacher (TGT) or a post-graduate teacher (PGT), expertise or specialisation is the primary teaching skill. Once you have full authority in your domain and continuously upgrade your knowledge as per the curriculum and newer research, there is nothing that can hold you back from becoming an effective teacher.
An unparalleled subject matter proficiency is the backbone of your teaching career. It will, therefore, help you:
- simplify the topics for your class
- inculcate the habit of asking questions
- solve student queries
- suggest useful reads apart from the prescribed books
- build innovative teaching strategies and devices (mnemonics, plays, flashcards, quizzes, etc)
3. Critical Thinking Skills
As a teacher, you will face diverse students and a variety of situations. It is seen that managing such circumstances becomes challenging. On a daily basis, a teacher can face conflict among students, disagreements, chaos, student disabilities, disruptive mischief mongers and the list goes on.
In these scenarios, your critical thinking skills will prove helpful. As a mentor, your critical thinking skills encompass:
- Knowing your learners
- Analysis of student behaviour
- Observing body language
- Making quick decisions
- Understanding of subject matter
- Setting goals
- Creating a learning environment
Now that smart learning is the preferred method of teaching and knowledge transfer in a modern classroom, combine critical thinking with emotional intelligence to humanise the experience for your students.
4. Creative Skills
The biggest hurdle in teaching is distracted students. Only fresh ideas and inventiveness has the power to rope in children’s interest in learning. Therefore, apart from critical thinking and exhaustive knowledge of the concerned subject, a teacher should be creative with her teaching strategies. He/she should come up with creative ways to teach a lesson.
Be it any subject, a unique teaching approach will make any lesson enjoyable and intriguing. Furthermore, being creative with your teaching methodologies enhance retention among students.
Since no two students are the same, come up with creative ways to teach and impact your diverse learners. This ability to introduce something new creatively is the essence of good teaching. An innovative approach is most helpful, especially when dealing with kids. This helps muster up their enthusiasm, excitement, and confidence for new learning. To develop your creative skills as a teacher, adopt these ways to unlock your creativity.
5. Skills of Empowerment
Teaching is a rewarding career path. You can empower others for learning and guide them with your expertise in a specific field of study. But apart from subject-related technicalities, it's a teacher's duty to empower the students to become the best version of themselves.
A student encounters a plethora of problems in terms of motivation, career choice, curriculum and personal development. A teacher should help solve these difficulties and show the light when the going gets tough.
The scope of learning should be broad, and every student should feel empowered to learn, create, and improve. As the number of things to learn increases with the onset of disruptive technologies and new discoveries, students must be naturally inspired to know more and improve. This is only possible when you, as a teacher, successfully empower students to learn.
6. Motivational Skills
Empowerment and motivation go hand in hand. Apart from being a subject matter expert, a teacher's role is that of a mentor who guides and encourages students to realise their true potential. Motivation, along with expert guidance, is a very important teaching skill to develop. Along with good teaching, little doses of motivation will serve as a great energy booster for students. Therefore, it is evident that along with technical teaching skills, teachers need soft skills too. Here is how you develop soft skills to soar high in your teaching career.
7. The Ability to Teach
What makes a good teacher? Is it his knowledge of the subject, his teaching style, or is it his eagerness to teach? While there are many qualities required in a modern teacher, the ability to teach remains at the apex.
You, as a teacher, should be enthusiastic enough to teach. This enthusiasm will give rise to your teaching abilities. Since there is no one shoe fits all approach, every teacher has to build his individualistic teaching style. An acute awareness of all the teaching methods learned during the teacher training phase will come in handy. To further refine your ability to teach, focus on your instructional skills.
When you are well aware of your teaching strategies and methodologies, you can easily prepare lesson plans and decide the teaching aids that go along with them. The ability to teach comprises the fine points of imparting a lecture and envelopes igniting the fire of learning and continuous upskilling among students. Furthermore, it is essential to build rapport, empathy, or an emotional connection with the learners in effective teaching.
8. Organisational Skills
Today, good organisational skills are essential for success in every domain and life in general. But this skill has higher relevance in the teaching profession. To tackle the diversity of tasks, teachers must develop good organisational skills to handle school, curriculum, and extracurriculars. As a professional teacher, the power to efficiently organises helps in:
- Developing thorough lesson plans
- Scheduling lessons
- Maintaining classroom harmony
- Efficient record-keeping
- Time management
- Class management
Such fine organisational skills not only help with your teaching career but are one of the most efficient ways to discipline yourself quickly. These organisational abilities will prepare you for any role in the future and is a central life skill too.
9. Mentoring Skills
Good mentoring skills are a prerequisite to becoming a good teacher. This skill set paves the way for knowledge acquisition in a classroom and beyond through:
- Active listening
- Prompt correction and improvement
- Building trust
- Smooth knowledge exchange
- Superior guidance
- Quick feedback
- Solid encouragement
You can transform and further magnify your role beyond the conventional mould by developing such essential mentoring skills for teachers. As a mentor, you can closely guide your pupil in his academic journey. Moreover, your students will highly benefit from this assistive mentoring.
10. Leadership Skills
A teacher leads by example. They have to responsibly instruct students, provide a conducive learning environment, and facilitate a good learning experience. Firm leadership qualities help to achieve this. Classroom teaching is not restricted to knowledge sharing, as students closely imitate and adopt the behaviour demonstrated by their teachers. Therefore, a teacher must develop only likeable qualities and skills that her students can acquire. Leadership skills are indispensable when working in a team or managing a classroom. After healthy mentoring capacities, your leadership skills will always come in handy while managing your students.
11. Collaborative Skills
Teaching requires higher-order collaboration skills. A teacher has to:
- manage students
- communicate with fellow teachers
- schedule meetings
- lead group projects
- help students with their difficulties
- solve problems
- smoothly impart knowledge
Thoroughly managing and balancing these tasks demands good collaboration and management skills. If you can collaborate meaningfully with others, you can easily direct students and teachers to come together, collaborate, learn, and share knowledge. This facilitates a productive learning environment where everyone bands together for enhanced knowledge building. Hence, your ability to collaborate is a leading teaching skill.
12. Effortless Time Management
A teacher has a lot on her plate. She has to:
- administer school functions
- create classroom timetable
- formulate lesson plans
- segments chapters
- schedule exams, tests, and timely rubrics
- prescribe assignments
- produce results and report cards
Along with these core teaching responsibilities, there are many other tasks that a teacher has to perform round the clock. Being a teacher, you ought to have nifty time management skills to carry out responsibilities effectively. Your good time management should be at the top of your teaching skills resume section.
13. The Ability to Adapt
The skill to adapt to the ever-changing world is the need of the hour. Teachers must also develop this skill of adaptability to adjust to new learning modes, methods, environments, and students. With the ongoing digitisations, this is one of the major skills 21st-century demands.
Besides this, a classroom is a very dynamic place. Unpredictable situations or problems may arise anytime. Being able to adapt and professionally manage such affairs is one of the best teaching skills.
14. Inculcate patience
After analysing your communication skills, teaching is a test of patience. As a teacher, you may face countless classroom situations. This may require you to resolve a conflict, teach and reteach concepts, manage tricky students, answer school authorities, fellow coworkers, and parents. Your emotional intelligence and patience will prove very useful while dealing with all this. Therefore, demonstrating patience, a positive attitude, and mindfulness are outstanding teaching skills.
15. Passion for Teaching
All the skills mentioned above will develop in a teacher automatically if they have the natural urge to become a better teacher. When you are genuinely passionate about becoming an effective teacher, you will take the initiative to experiment, upskill, and build your teaching strategies.
If you are truly passionate about what you teach and sincerely care about the well-being of your students, the fondness towards the profession will build instinctively. Moreover, it will be visible to your students and the management as well. These are quintessential to shape your persona as a role model.
The discussion above contains a list of teaching skills needed to become an all-around, effective teacher. These are a must-have for a polished learning experience. The ultimate method is to understand student behaviour, monitor the situation, know your students, and take prompt actions to improve your teaching. Since there is no shortcut to becoming a good teacher, constant practice and knowledge of student psychology will help you enhance your teaching abilities.
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