Tips For Becoming A Good Teacher - Staveinvaders Teaching Tips

Being a good teacher is not easy at first for everyone. It comes more naturally to some people than to others. Some people's parents were school teachers, or private music teachers. Some people are blessed with all the necessary traits as if by some great turn of luck. You, however, can learn all that you need to know here. Well not really but it's a start. I will be adding to these more and more often as time goes by.

Some things that I have found important:

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	Try to see the student's understanding of a topic in order to take them to where you want them. Then make links to that existing understanding.
	Constantly link your teaching in with their known world. This may mean learning about some things you previously had not shown an interest in. For example, Street Art.
	Be organized. Have all preparation done and room ready.
	Keep the focus on learning rather than discipline.
	Assess their needs and try and cater to them.
	Catch them being good. Say nice things when you first see them. Interact with the more dominant members of the class and you may cater to their greater need for attention.
	Target your audience. Don't take pictures to colour in if you are teaching adults (Well generally!) The more effective you are in presenting material that they connect with, the more success you will have. So think about what hooks them in. It might be Hip Hop culture. It might be cars, makeup, PS2 or Xbox. Try and use things they relate to.
	Patience. Have infinite patience.It takes times for brain cells to connect. And if they are not getting it... sorry but it's really up to you to take it "a step back" and see if you can connect them to their known world. And if they still don't get it? You have to just keep on going back. Sure not everyone will get it all the time. And there are always decisions to be made when you are dealing with lots of students who all learn at different speeds, or in different ways.
	Keywords: Introduce the keywords for new ideas as early as possible. Make the students say the words back to you so they have said them at least once. Explain that it is very important to use the keywords for a subject as part of learning. For instance when students talk about musical symbol for the first time they commonly say "that P thing" in reference to "minim". Or "Golf club thingy" in reference to "crotchet". I make sure they actually say it, or else they will call it exactly the same thing next time!
	Connections: Once you have the keywords in the students minds, you then set about CREATING AND EVOLVING the connections BETWEEN the keywords. This is not to be underestimated. It is through evolving the relationships between the keywords that makes people become specialists, as Doctors, Lawyers, Teachers, Carpenters etc.
	Encourage an "entire life" approach to your students: Don't only nurture them in your subject area.
	Talk to them about current affairs. This builds their awareness greatly, and connects them into their area and time.
	When you introduce new ideas, create connections to the students known world. The things they are already familiar with.
	Plan. It can take all the stress out of classes, or anything you have never done before. The skills you gain here also overflow into the rest of your life. You will find yourself able to organize better functions, holidays, and weekends away!
	Share. Talking to other teachers helps a lot. Don't assume they are always to busy either. Teachers understand the value of supporting and nurturing colleagues, but you need to be able to ask for help.
	Build positive relationships with your students. Teaching might have changed a lot since you were a student, so be prepared to be different to how your teachers were with you.
	Give students responsibilities. Even little ones can give significant growth and a rise in the self esteem of a student.
	Always keep the focus more on LEARNING, than on discipline.
	Keep perspective about the things that happen in the classroom. A good test is "in 20 years time will that really be important to me?"
	There are so many tips for being a good teacher so make sure you keep searching on the internet and asking questions of the search engines especially the ones to do with music. The internet is a hive of knowledge that grows hugely every day so we need to be on the edge of the technological advancement in order to feed our loved ones. Share what you learn, that's my teaching pedagogy.