If you wonder why some teachers can take a classroom and produce some of the most academically accomplished students while others struggle to get the essential, academic milestone met, the answer lies is the mastery of classroom performance abilities.
Teachers with exceptional performance skills possess a confidence so strong that they can capture the attention and interest in the most challenging classrooms. Students can sense when a teacher has confidence in his or her teaching abilities. This confidence is contagious. Everything this teacher does commands attention. Students are excited about listening and learning.
When I first started teacher, I hadn’t mastered my presentation skills. I was nervous and this energy spread to the students, who immediately became agitated and bored. In addition to this experience, I was being evaluated by the principal during the second week of my teaching career. But it wasn’t until I begin to master my skill, recover from mistakes and strengthen my knowledge in weak areas that my confidence in my teaching abilities grew in leaps and bounds.
All teachers should strive to possess a repertoire of good performance abilities if they desire to climb the mountain of success in the education field. Exceptional teachers display a wide range of abilities, including motivating and inspiring students, encouraging and expressing creativity, prioritizing, organizing, academic goal setting, communicating best practices, behavior modeling, setting standards of conduct, implementing and enforcing classroom rule and regulations.
The more of these abilities you add to your repertoire and master them, the more your confidence will shoot through the ceiling of your classroom.
Teachers with limited abilities will struggle in today’s modern classrooms because of the multitude of contingencies that need to be handled. Classroom management, administrative demands, lesson plan designs require a quality skill set for continuous success.
Tips for Developing Confidence in Performance Skills
Believe
The ability to perform effectively in the classroom will make or break a teacher. Longevity in the education field requires you to know your stuff. The first step starts with believing in yourself as an important part of another human beings life. What you do in the classroom will influence this person for life. The words, actions and the learning activities you offer to a child will always linger somewhere in its memory throughout adulthood.
Something you say or do might not become apparent until that child becomes an adult. Nevertheless, the message will remain influential. For example, I have had students express gratitude for my effort long into their adulthood. Somehow they were reminded of something significant I said or done in my classroom.
Act Bold
If you are a teacher who is afraid of students, you better reconsider if the teaching profession is your cup of tea. Good teaching demands boldness. The ability to manage a classroom, to present an effective lesson plan and to stand up to the sometimes overwhelming pressures of administration calls for teachers who are sure of themselves and their abilities to make a significant impact.
Boldness is standing toe to toe to threatening situations and overcoming them. The more we use boldness, the more fear loses its grip over us. The teachers who possess the power of boldness will have the confidence to become the lord of their abilities.
When a teacher is afraid in the classroom, the students take charge. Their goal is to create as much chaos and confusion as possible.
Inwardly, they are taking their frustration with school out on you. They are probably doing to you what they really want to do to their parents: produce massive embarrassment so that you can leave the classroom and never return. I have taught in classrooms in which the students had run away every teacher they encountered, until they met me. I was their match.
Bold Presentations
To successfully communicate the elements of a lesson plan, you as a teacher must be bold. You must command the attention of every student. If students are talking and goofing off, you must have the courage to firmly redirect them. Students do not respond will to shaky and indecisive commands. But when you look a student straight in the eyes and make known to them who is boss, your message hits the target and they usually self-correct themselves.
In addition, teachers must have the confidence to present the lesson plan with a degree of voice tone that is clear and precise. Many student s have a way of playing “What games” with teachers who rush through lesson plans, skip over or barely pronounce words.
Bold teachers are not afraid to stand up to administration if it becomes an obstacle to educating students. Highly effective teachers often clash with administration who usually desires to take the more traditional approach to teaching students. These teachers are not afraid of getting fired or ignored for attempting to fulfill the vision for their students.
Acquiring boldness must be the aim of every teacher who desires to be a significant difference maker in the life of a child.
Strengthening performance abilities
Teachers who are weak in academics and skills such as math, English, creativity, diversity or classroom presentations can become a master in these areas by enrolling in teacher enrichment classes or seminars, viewing educational videos covering various skills, or studying the ideas offered on multiple educational internet sites.
The sky is the limit when it comes to building your teaching confidence and performing at an exceptional level. Super teachers never stop learning. Every new idea, trend or educational milestone can never escape the awareness of teachers who win.
