Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Jiaoqiao Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Binzhou Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of ONLINE TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
I would say the hardest part about becoming a Teacher is having the confidence to face your students in the classroom. I speak from experience because this was a challenge for me in the beginning when I taught Spanish as a foreign language. My students were primary and high school students, essentially just kids, but this intimidated me the most about my job. It is true that in time you will and should become more confident teaching in the classroom, as the saying goes…”practice makes perfect”, right? However, there are some things a new teacher can do or be aware of to help increase their confidence in the classroom. Being prepared for your class is always top priority. The more you prepare your lesson and think about what possible challenges may arise in the classroom, the better prepared you are to deal with them properly and positively. Your plan should have a clear goal to achieve by the end of the lesson and include a good balance of activities, relevant and interesting to your students. Knowing what you are going to do next will help avoid awkward moments in front of the students and will avoid internal panic attacks for you! Next, I advise to be aware of your body language. This affects the way others see you and the way you see and feel about yourself. Even if you are not feeling confident, standing tall will give you an air of confidence and the students and other teachers will sense this. There are also certain poses that you should be aware of which give the opposite impression of confidence. These are for example, slouching, crossing your arms or speaking too softly. These all make you look like you are scared and intimidated and if you teach high school students, they can pick up on this very quickly and take advantage of the situation to control the classroom! You should also be aware of your posture and correct it and practice good posture that sends out the message of confidence. The third top on my list is when it comes to classroom rules. Clear rules should be communicated to the students before beginning the lesson. In my experience teaching high school students Spanish, it was very common for a student to ask to go to the bathroom, or ask their classmate for a pencil or eraser, etc… My top rule was to get the students to ask in Spanish to go to the bathroom, to borrow a pencil or eraser etc. During my Spanish class, English was not permitted (unless in special circumstances when explaining a grammar point for example). In the beginning this was tough, but I anticipated what questions they would normally ask each other and I wrote them on the board in Spanish. The rule in my classroom was to speak only Spanish, even if at first it wasn’t grammatically correct, I wanted them to make an attempt and this was a great learning point for the students to increase their vocabulary and form sentences, making them more fluent. Lastly, another important point to mention in maintaining confidence in the classroom is to never shout or say bad words. It is crucial to keep your temper under control and remain calm at all times! You can do this by taking a deep breath or simply stand back silently if the class is too noisy and the students refuse to quiet down to listen. Remaining silent rather than shouting above the students is actually very effective. Sooner or later the students will realize that you are just observing them and not fighting back to get their attention and they will eventually settle down.
