As a teacher, you always want to be improving your methods. New technology and teaching techniques are coming out at a breakneck pace. It can be hard to keep up, but you must. Continuous improvement is necessary for both a successful career and successful students. These methods will help you continuously improve teaching ability.
Listen to Teacher Evaluation Results
Teacher evaluations can quantify your progress and compare you to both your past self and other teachers so you know how you measure up. They are used for a reason, and you must make sure to use them correctly. Understand the teaching standards these analyses measure. There are several different methods of teacher performance reviews, so knowledge of how your school conducts them is important. Good teacher evaluations take a number of factors into account and measure effectiveness by several different metrics. These include things like classroom observation, student ratings, collaborations, peer observation, interviews and common evaluations within different school subjects. These need not be formal, and they can take into account certain areas in which you wish to improve. All you have to do if you have that option is let your evaluator know.
Listen to Students
Always encourage your students to come to you if they have questions. This instills in them curiosity and a strong desire to learn, which should be the end goal of any teacher. You never know when your students might have useful insights into your teaching methods. If you want more information from them, you can also ask for it. Putting together an anonymous survey is a good option. You can find out how students prefer to learn, what they like about your teaching style and what they don’t like. Certain students might not be able to put their feelings about your teaching style into words. However, if they are struggling, you need to look into different ways to reach them and help them understand the material. You can also connect with your students’ parents to see how you can better your teaching skills for students with different needs.
Partake in Continuing Education
Every state requires that teachers take annual professional development classes to keep their license and certification. However, you can go above and beyond that. There are a number of resources you can use. These include books, scientific studies and journals, education seminars, conventions and more. Companies like Google offer tech education certification for teachers through their Google Educator program. You can also consider additional formal schooling. Even if your state is not one that requires a master’s degree to teach, obtaining one is still worth considering. It can increase your job prospects, make you more eligible for a promotion, increase your salary and teach you new skills.
Improve Yourself
No job is perfect, and there is likely some aspect of being a teacher at which you aren’t skilled. Even though you should always focus on your strengths professionally, it never hurts to improve yourself. The first step is to reflect carefully on yourself. Chronicle in which areas you have been successful and in which ones you have struggled. Once you have identified the areas in which you want to improve, set goals. Strengthening tech skills is particularly important in the digital age. Technology makes many elements of your teaching job easier. Various applications allow teachers to upload their presentations for the entire class to access, accept homework assignments digitally and facilitate additional discussion on class forums. These are only a few examples of how technology stands to impact your classroom.
Always keep improving your ability to teach. Continued improvement will be beneficial for your career and for your students. You won’t regret the effort you put into this rewarding profession.
