The coronavirus pandemic has affected basically every aspect of modern life, including how we work. While many employees were simply told to carry on doing their work at home, for teachers, it wasn’t quite simple. After all, this isn’t a job where you can just dig yourself into your work, no matter where you are. It’s about engaging with your students, and when you’re not right in front of them, there are many things that can disrupt that engagement. Here, we’ll take a look at a few useful tips that’ll help you to become the best teacher that you can be.
Improve Your Setup
So long as you’ve had your morning coffee and your voice is working well, you’ll know that you can walk into your classroom and get command of your students. But when you’re conducting your lessons online, things are a little bit different. It’s not just you that you’ll need to depend on; your technology will also play a big role. There’s nothing worse than being raring to teach, but then finding that you’re having hardware or internet issues. If you know you’ll be teaching at home for a while, then you may want to consider investing in a better setup.
Set the Tone
The classroom is a place for learning because it has been specifically designed for that. Your home is designed for your comfort, not teaching. As such, you may find it a little difficult to get into the right mindset for teaching. One way to help yourself is to create the space and set the tone. If you have a spare room, then turning it into an office will be a great option. You’ll also want to make sure that it’s clear and spacious, and that there’s nothing overly personal in view of the camera.
Change Your Approach
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been teaching in the classroom for a year or twenty years: everyone can find it difficult to adjust to online teaching. While the fundamentals of teaching can remain the same no matter what environment you’re in, the methods of teaching do change. If you’re looking to step up your online learning credentials, then take a look at improving your teaching capabilities. There are plenty of webinars for teachers that can help you improve the effectiveness of your e-learning teaching. As from improving your skills, you’ll find that learning these things helps you to boost your confidence and enjoy online teaching all the more.
Ask for Feedback From Students
Finally, why not look at asking your students for feedback? This is of course more appropriate for some types of students than others, but it can be highly effective. You’ll likely have been thrown into this type of teaching, so you can’t expect that you’ll get it right from the very first lesson. If you can get some feedback from your students, you might just find that you learn one or two things that can really improve the lessons for everyone involved.