TEFL Independence Viriginia

How teachers can increase their confidence in the classroom. Self confidence is having confidence in oneself. In my opinion this is one of the most important things that we need to acquire not only as teachers but as a person. If you have a low self confidence it can affect your life choices and your expectations in a big way. Confidence can be a self-fulfilling prophecy as those without it may fail, or not try, because they lack confidence and those with it may succeed because they are confident rather than because of an innate ability. So how does this issue affect teachers? Studies have shown that 35% of teachers leave the profession in the 1st year. (from teachers helping teachers, Springfield public schools, Springfield, MA) One of the reasons may be because of lack of confidence. However many course that teachers may do before they start work nothing can prepare them for their first real class and the sensation of walking into a class full of people that you don´t know and having to stand up and teach. Nothing can prepare you for the amount of work that the first year involves and with this overload of work feelings of disillusion and lack of confidence can appear. First year teachers have to prepare all their own classes from scratch. This requires a certain confidence in your own abilities and skills. Expectations can also be much too high in the first year and any student who does not learn well be taken personally. The english language is very complex and a complete understanding of all the grammar can take years of study. In the mean time an inexperienced teacher can face lots of questions from students that they don´t know the answer to. All these issues and more can lower the confidence of an inexperienced teacher and the lower their confidence the harder their job will seem and decrease their chances of success. So what can we do to improve the self confidence of the teachers? It is important that there are good support networks within the school and that the teachers help each other as much as possible. If one teacher does not know the answer to something it is important that they feel that they can ask. No one was born knowing everything and even the most experienced teacher does not know all the answers. It is important that teachers have the adequate training and that they continue to study and improve their skills over the years as this improves and maintains confidence levels. Good lesson plans and revising or learning the grammar areas that are going to be covered in the class before hand is important. If you know what you are teaching and are confident in what you are saying this comes across to the students and they in turn have confidence in you. Confidence comes with time, with learning and with dedication to your job. The classes become easier each year giving you more time as a teacher to think of new and interesting ways to teach. Your confidence improves as you learn of better ways to teach different areas. One example of this is when I was faced with a class of very bright 6 year olds. I had already been teaching them for a year and knew them very well. In the book they were using the next grammatical point was to learn the verb" to be". I could not imagine how I was going to explain to a class of 6 year olds the verb " to be". I decided to look on the internet for inspiration and I found a great song on www.genkeienglish.net called the pronoun song. The kids loved it and learnt the verb "To be" and since then I have used the song a lot. This was great for my confidence and great for the kids. Confidence comes with practice, learning from our mistakes and from not expecting too much from ourselves. We cannot possible know it all at first but with time knowledge and confidence it will grow. It is important therefore that teachers are allowed to grow and learn that we don´t expect them to know all the answers at once and that each teacher is allowed, within school limits and needs, to acquire their own teaching methods.