Do you Want to Become a Creative Teacher?
Creativity is defined as the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality.I bet all teacher would like to be described as creative teachers but how can we become creative teachers? What are the first steps?
Steps to Become a Creative Teacher
Step one: Become a Knowledgeable Teacher
It seems obvious but you should know a lot about the subject matter that you are going to teach about. It is impossible to know everything about everything and that’s why schools and universities should make the changes necessary so teachers specialize in a few subject areas.If you want to teach grammar, you should know grammar points well, and if you want to teach pronunciation you should become familiar with the phonemic symbols and sounds in the English Language.Now it is easier to learn about teaching than it was before, there are lots of books, training courses and online resources to help you with professional development.One fact about creative teachers is that they know more than English, creative teachers are usually educated in other areas so they can easily draw on their experiences and outside interests.
Step Two: Connect with Other Teachers
Don’t you hold the idea that university programs include all that you need to know about teaching.Connecting with others is crucial to your professional development. As a teacher you dont have a monopoly on creative ideas. You will learn more if you start paying attention to what other good teachers are doing.Now with the Internet you can search on Youtube for ideas about games and ways to assess learning among other important things.Facebook has also become a community in which teachers can get together and share ideas. Make sure that you follow Facebook pages that can inspire and change the way you do things.
Step Three: Collect and Organize Teaching Ideas
What happens if you see a good idea on Facebook, you listen to a good idea in a training meeting or a colleague teaches you an awesome game to introduce grammar? Where are you going to keep that idea until you needed?Are you going to keep that idea in an old notebook that looks like a deep sea of things that you don’t want to read?As a teacher you should consider using an app where you can organize new teaching ideas, worksheets and information.I recommend using Evernote and Pocket since they have been in the market for so long, plus, they are free and you can easily tag the new-found information.
Step Four: Share What You Know
If you are a good source of good ideas and If others has helped you to become what you are right now, I think it is time for you to start sharing what you know with other teachers.Now social media has made sharing what we know with others easily, you can create a Facebook post with a simple but creative teaching idea, you can post picture of what you do in classes on Pinterest, you can share audios with other teachers by using AudioMack, you can upload a video of your work to Youtube or you can create a blog using wordpress, blogger and other blogging platform.Just remember if there is something that you are proud of and that can inspire others in some way, shape or form, why don’t you share it ?
Step Five: You are Creative
All people have the potential to be creative. You just have to take some time and try to come up with something that nobody else has tried before or at least something that nobody else has tried before in the place where you teach.Start trying tools such as Kahoot, Quizlet, Google Docs and tell students to use their cellphones in classes to learn English.Using something that you haven’t tried before is a beginning, then you teaching mindset will make you see creative ways to teach a topic in several ways rather than the ordinary, outdated and traditional ways.
Step Six: Make Creativity part of Your Teaching
What’s going to happen if you always try to come up with something creative for your students?I bet that you will get used to incorporating creative ideas into your teaching and time will fly during classes. You need to keep doing that until you find in a position in which being creative is not one more burden but a characteristic of your personality as a teacher.
Step Seven: Start Experimenting
In the life of a teacher, you wil have moments in which your best ever lesson plan didn’t work as you expected, don’t get dissapointed and make the adjustments necessary to get the results that you want.Try to be a teacher that it is different from the rest, not just because you have to be different but because your style will be different and your students will recognize that once you have it.A couple of weeks ago, I instructed my students to create memes using the “Future with Will” and Future with Going to Grammar Structures. They created funny memes because they are meant to be funny and I am quite sure that they won’t forget the lesson in which an English teacher told them that you can learn English with memes.If you haven’t had the chance to teach for a full year, know that you have a good idea but a teaching life comes with a unique set of challenges and hurdles.Try to make sense out of everything you do, don’t do things in the way that everyone does just to be able to fit in. Old teaching practices aren’t necessarily good.