Teaching Strategies

By

Katie Law

 Collaboration of Families and Professionals

Dr. Dee Acklie

October 10, 2003

Teaching Strategies

     Being a teacher requires a variety of strategies and a personality that can adapt in any given situation.  There are so many different aspects and cultures that I am going to have to work with when I become a teacher.  All issues are important when it comes to dealing with children, but the aspect that I find most important is effective communication with the child and parents.  Without communication, education would flounder and there would be no help or support from parents.  A few ideas to help the communication waves open up could be a friendly phone call to the parents complimenting their child on a good day of hard work.  Perhaps my classroom could be open and welcoming one day a week for any parents who wanted to have a conference.   It is so important to include parents in their child’s education.  They may also offer to volunteer or help out in the classroom, and I will make sure they are always welcome.  I believe that with communication, I will be exposed to collaborating with parents and gaining more information on various cultures and views. 

     It is also essential to understand and appreciate the various dimensions of human diversity.  By asking parents about their culture and having them come into my classroom, I can expose my students to individual differences that each of them has.  Once again human diversity relates to communication with parents and teachers.  As a teacher, I should be aware of the family structure of all my

students and the parenting styles they are exposed to.  I may have a student with a unique and rare cultural background, and I definitely want that child to feel comfortable and proud sharing it with others.

     Sharing backgrounds also ties in with engagement in positive social interactions.  Students can develop polite social skills by respectfully, but enthusiastically, sharing their cultures with others.  I need to be ready to meet with principals and other staff members to collaborate and find out what is happening and what, if anything, needs to be done.  Having good control of my classroom and consistent behavior in dealing with social disagreements whenever they may occur, is another factor that I have to be aware of.  If I am not consistent in dealing with problems, I am going to have a hard time controlling my classroom and establishing any communication with students or their families.

By maintaining control in my classroom, I will be able to build healthy, trusting relationships with my students.  I know that if I care and provide a safe environment for each and every one of them, they will treat me with respect and want to learn.  Responsibility is a big factor in the development of children.  They need to feel like they belong and have a role in where they are for most of their day.  An example of having a role would be to assign chores for the students each morning when they arrive and when they are ready to leave in the afternoon.  This responsibility will make them feel like they contributed by helping in the classroom.  At the end of the day, the students could be allowed to give suggestions on what would make a lesson they did better or how the classroom should be set up to make them more comfortable, but at the same time, stimulating enough to learn.

     As a teacher, I will have a desire to give my students everything I can to help them to become literate, functional adults in today’s society.  Developing a trusting relationship with each student, making learning fun, and making school a safe place for students to come are very important factors to me as a future educator.  One way to engage students is to relate what the lesson is to something they already know or something they are going to encounter on a real life basis.   It will allow them to mature and at the same time foster growth among the students.  Part of facilitating growth is to be aware of all the needs my students may have.  For example if some of the children come to school hungry or cold, I will work to implement a program that will have food and warm clothes set aside for them to borrow.  They will remember and build a trusting relationship with me if I work to help meet their needs.. 

     Finally, my main goal is to have my students understand how important an education is.  I want my students to have the desire to learn and the internal motivation to succeed.  I will stress to them how education can impact their future either in a good way or, if they do not continue it, then a bad way.  I believe that it is very important for students to know and understand what is going on in the outside world, but that cannot hinder the development and learning for which the children attend school.  As an educator, I plan on doing the best I can with what I believe and know and learn from experience.