Recently, I have been asked, “Mr. Japan, you’re a teacher. How do you start a class and how do you manage it?” These questions got me thinking. What does it take to set up a class and what is really needed to teach. This tutorial is to help someone who has never taught and hasn’t the foggiest idea on what it takes to be a teacher. I’ll try to cover several different aspects of teaching and you can join in on the one you like.
Today, I will cover the “Teaching Environment” part of teaching. What you need to do to set up a place where people want to learn. I will be covering facilities fully in a different post. Just know that the three kids are traditional, new age, and open. It doesn’t matter where you teach, if you don’t have the right environment, students will not want to learn from you.
The first thing you need for the teaching environment is a positive attitude. Because if you don’t have that, then you shouldn’t even been teaching. Your negativity will leech onto your students and they won’t want to be in your class. I’m sure you have heard of the monotone teacher, who drawls on and on about his subject, putting even the most enthusiastic student to sleep. You don’t want to be that teacher.
If that means you have to act up a little bit and make some odd noises and have your students laugh. GOOOOOD!!! That means that they are paying attention to you and want to hear what you will say next. It is in those moments that you can sneak some insightful information into even the thickest of student’s heads.
Next, you will need a decent area that will capture your student’s attention. This is just as important as you being somewhat interesting. I used the word “area” since you don’t need to be teaching in a traditional classroom to have a good area. You need somewhere that is somewhat related to the topic that you want to teach. Be that at a park or in a library. Yes, you can teach in a library and still be somewhat interesting. Libraries are not your enemy. Sometimes you will have to teach your students, even the adult ones, what a library is and how to use it.
As you can see in the image above, the students have a clear view of the teacher. Each row of seats is a little elevated so the student can see over the head of the student in front of them. When you want to teach a lesson, you have to consider how your students will see you. You need to be visible for each student. An outdoor/new age classroom has this advantage over traditional classrooms. So if you can’t get a room, don’t worry about it.
The bottom line. To teach, you have to make your students conferrable in both the environment they are situated in and the person who is teaching them the lesson.
I hope you tune in next week (Tuesday) for the next installment. Next week’s topic will be “What Subject should I teach?”
A little about me and why I know what I’m talking about. For all purposes, my name is Mr. Japan on the Steem School, since I live in Japan and Amsheagar is a little too hard for people to pronounce. I have been teaching for the past seven years, both in schools and private lessons. I mainly focus on English as a second language, which entails all the tricks and wackiness of the English language. Why read and be read two different way and why you should, stay still and don’t steal the steel. I am the oddball in the picture below.
As stated at the beginning, this was a request from fellow steemit users in the discord group Steemschool. To join the growing Steemschool community, follow this link to the Discord chat. https://discord.gg/Tmd2Fuf