Quaility Teachers

As a teacher, we always want to do the best for our students. The is always room for improvement. The question is how do we improve ourselves? In the article "Quallity Teaching: From Theory to Practice. The Question Mark: Vol. 1/No. 2/September, 2004," it gives steps for improving our teacher performance. The article first states that teaching is a lifetime journey of exploration, practice, and discovery. Teachers need to incorporate art, science, craft, and alchemy to create and effective pedagogy of learning in the classroom. The use of these four aspects is not found in any textbook, but is developed by the teacher as she explores her classroom and darts, weaves, and charms the students. Teachers must also remember that what worked one year, will work again the next year. Quality teaching involves using your magic and understanding each student's learning styles to provide the highest level learning for them to succeed.
As a teacher we make this happen by providing conditions in the classroom that help students learn. Students most learn when they feel curious, are understood, are intrigued, are supported, challenged, comfortable and recognizable as an individual. Unfortunately a teacher will have students that are not at their best learning because of what happens outside the classroom. As a teacher we need to support the student the best we can in the situatuion they are in and sometimes take the time to provide extra support to help them achieve their learning potential.
Teachers often as a willingness to be quality teachers research best practices reports for better learning. This is a great, but often we try to combine ideas from many articles and often leads to a frustrating challenge on the classroom. Sometimes the solutions offerred are highly exaggerated, and cost lots of money. The article suggests we research the finding further in the article before putting them into practice.
Teaching is a discovery process. It is a trial and error situation on a daily basis. Ideas may work for a while in your classroom, but things evolve and change and you need to do the same. To keep yourself on track in the classroom the article suggests these twelve things.
1. Increase you magic, 2. Understand the young ones, 3. Look for good routines,4. Avoid heroics, 5. Take breaks-coast-rest-pace yourself, 6. Ask for help-for ideas-class tricks, 7. Question, 8. Add one strategy each week, 9. Focus, 10. Project like a champion-have faith, 11. Lose weight-shed the nensense, 12. Eat well-Feed yourself on good ideas.
Finally, as a teacher, not everyday is going to be perfect, there are going to be bad days. Those are the days we reflect on and say okay today didn't go well, what can I do to change what happened, and then put it out of your mind and focus on the next day. Dwelling on the bad will burn you out as a quality teacher. BE POSITIVE!
Anne P.