Dear Teacher,
I would like to
congratulate you for choosing teaching as your professional career. I hope you will
love and enjoy your new position as an IT / Business Faculty. Like you I have
started my career as teacher just four years back and since then it’s a great
journey. I believe that I have learned more then what I have taught during this
period. An advantage of being a teacher is that every day is full of adventure
and challenges, you will get endless opportunities to learn new things from
your students and colleagues. Today I want to share my experience with you so
that you don’t do same mistakes as I did and hopefully have a good beginning.
I started my teaching
career as a traditional teacher because this is the only way I knew at that
time. I went to class and presented my lecture and expected that students will
listen to my boring lecture for next 60 min and digest everything but soon I realize
that it’s not working and the students learning style has been change. Thanks
to new technology students have more knowledge as compare to 20 years back they
all are connected to virtual word through their iPads, Smart phones and
Laptops. Students are performing multiple tasks inside the classroom and as teacher
you need to make sure that you grab their attention and for sure the boring slides
will not help it. You have to make sure that when you are teaching it’s not
only one way communication. You need to make activities which will involve
students and make sure that they will participate in the learning process as
well.
I have learned many
different teaching strategies in last two years like (DI) Direct instruction, (IL)
Interactive lecturing, (CL) Collaborative learning and (PBL) Project base
learning. What I have realize is that you cannot just pick one of them and
follow it in a particular course you need to use a mix of these strategies according
to situation. For example if you are teaching some definition which require
student to remember and understand then DI and IL are best strategies but if
you require them to analyze, evaluate and compare things then the other techniques
will suit more.
As a teacher you have to
clearly define the goals and expectation of a course to the students at the beginning
of each course. You should provide them course planner which include the
learning outcome on weekly basis and also an assessment schedule with its
breakdown. Your assessment plan should be align with learning outcome and your
expectation of students otherwise students will remain confuse in your class
and will focus on material which is related to exams only.
Always make sure that
you listen to students and provide them guidance whenever required. Make a friendly atmosphere is classroom. If you
become too strict student will be afraid and never ask you question also if you
are very lenient they might take advantage and not pay attention at all. You
have to follow a mid-way approach.
You should always keep
the learning door open as you will learn many new things from your students for
example last week my students showed me how to use an iPad for writing online
books. You should take advice and guidance from colleagues as they are in this field
for many years also be ready to share knowledge and your expertise with other.
In some cases you can observer your colleagues inside classroom and learn how
they manage students and how you can adopt this strategy.
When assessing students
make sure that that you use both summative and formative type of assessment. Do
not make the course too much theoretical that it become boring, provide
students activities which are relevant to real world example. Make these
activities as graded activities so students will have more interest.
Hope this letter has provides
you meaningful experience and will help you in your career. Above all always be
happy and enjoy whatever you do .
Regards
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