How to be a good teacher or coach? This is a question whose answer could be of interest to anyone . It does not matter what you do in life: everyone - sooner or later - can play the role of teacher, coach or mentor in the family, in friendships, at work or on the playing field . When this happens it is important to be prepared.
What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.
Karl Menninger
How to be a good teacher or coach: here are tips
To be a good teacher or coach you must possess basic skills. Let's see what they are:
- Use the first few seconds to connect on an emotional level:
Stop for a moment and try to remember the best teacher, coach or mentor you met. I'm sure your memories are not so much about what that person has done or his skills, but how he made you feel . Somehow you knew he believed in you and understood you and was able to capture your potential . I will never forget my French teacher in high school, and you know why? He supported me and made me feel special revealing unconditional trust in my abilities. In short, he was capable of connect emotionally with those around him.
Effective teaching is based on trust , and when it comes to trust, human beings usually behave the same way: we decide to trust a person or not from the very first moments of interaction . We rely on our intuition and the feelings that the other transmits to us. That's why to be a good teacher or coach you should take advantage of the first few seconds of the first meeting to connect emotionally with your students . There are several ways to create such a connection - ocular contact, body language, empathy or sense of humor - but any of them is intended to be used, you need to make sure you give priority to this aspect above all else.
- Avoid long and long speeches:
Because of some films, many believe that great teachers or coaches stand in front of their students and let themselves go to inspired sermons . But real life is very different from film fiction. First of all a good teacher or coach does not put himself on a pedestal or in front of the students, but at the side of who is helping . He does not give long and tedious speeches, but only lively fragments full of useful information . If you want to be a good teacher or coach, you need to be able to provide short, concise and direct messages, addressing the individual members of your students. To speak indiscriminately to everyone is less effective than speaking individually.Targeted and personalized communication - aimed at the individual - also creates a greater emotional connection. What matters, then, is not the depth, the greatness or the wisdom of what one says, but the being appropriate to the context, in order to get the most out of the other by lighting a spark in their soul .
- Stay away from saccharine and vague language:
One of the most common mistakes made by teachers and coaches is the use of a language that is too saccharine and imprecise. Often those who use this approach are not effective because they end up communicating in a mild and vague way. Instead, the ideal is to speak in a direct and concrete way, specifying what one wants from the students . To be a good teacher or a good coach always tries to give precise indications and that they are measurable or observable, avoiding words that do not describe precisely what needs to be done. For example, saying "please, work more closely with each other as a team " is vague; instead say "please, do a meeting for ten minutes every morning with each other as a team " is specific and concrete.
- Use scoreboards for learning:
Life is full of scorecards- performance evaluations, test results, rankings, statistics, etc. The problem with scoring is that they can distract us from the priority: rather than giving importance to learning, we end up pursuing short-term goals. This most times happens in businesses as well as in sports. When we focus only on "winning" we neglect the broader objective: to learn to develop skills for the long term. If you want to be a good teacher or coach, create your own scorecard. Choose a unit of measure that fits the skill you want to develop and start tracking progress. Use this unit of measurement to motivate and guide your students. For example, great football coaches track the number of good passes their teams perform during a game and use this number - more than the result - as a yardstick to define their team's success.
- Maximize your efforts:
Efforts are the essence of learning- no one of your students can learn without sacrifice and struggle. Only this way is improved! The challenge to be a good teacher or coach is to be able to create an environment that diverts people from passivity and directs them towards stimulating and interesting modes of action. For example, in some school systems, a technique called "reversing the class" has been very successful.. The standard model provides that the school is followed by lessons and at home we study consolidating what was learned during the lessons. In an inverted model, however, the students do the exact opposite: they listen to the online lessons at home and spend time in the classroom actively facing the work, solving problems and memorizing the topics, while the teacher goes through the desks offering to each individual pupil his support. According to some studies, the inverted classes get better results than the classic ones.
If you want to be a good teacher or coach, you have to be a bit like a designer: rely on your creativity trying to create the most fruitful environment possible. Ask yourself: how can I transform passive learning moments into active learning situations ?
- Try to create independent students:
Your long-term goal is to help your students improve so much that they do not need you anymore. In practice, you must aim to become superfluous! To do this you must avoid playing too central a role: if the students rely too much on you risk not to make them mature. It aims to create an environment where people can improve on their own. Whenever you have the opportunity, take a step back and stimulate a moment of independence. Your job should consist in the creation of a "miniature" teacher - a sort of copy of yourself - that is installed in each of your pupils, guiding them on a path of progressive improvement.
Conclusions
In this article I have brought back a series of ideas and practical advice to be a good teacher or coach . Obviously it is a difficult job, full of obstacles and responsibilities, but perhaps this is particularly stimulating . It is no coincidence that great teachers teach their life mission . I would like you to talk to me - in the comments below - about your experiences as a teacher or educator and the strategies you used to improve yourself.