Teaching is about much more than lesson planning or standing at the front of a classroom and delivering. Here are weird skills needed to be a teacher.
Teachers are the frontlines of guiding our youth towards a successful future. They don’t just teach specific subjects, but also instill life lessons and behavioral skills to their students.
It’s one of the most rewarding jobs that you could possibly have. You get to witness your hard work and dedication pay off as your students grow in front of your eyes.
There are certain aspects and skills that all teachers need in order to be successful, but some of them are quite unexpected.
Here are some of the skills needed to be a teacher that you may have never previously considered.
- Self-Confidence
While teaching can be one of the most rewarding careers you could possibly have, it can also be the most mentally-draining.
You’ll find yourself repeating a lot of the same instructions and questions over and over. There are some students you’ll have that may seem like the type you’ll never be able to get through to.
In times like those, it’s important to have confidence in your abilities. You need to be able to trust that what you’re doing will pay off down the line.
You’ll have days where you’re mentally exhausted, and you’ll need to summon the courage to power through it. Confidence is key for those situations.
- Patience
Regardless of what age you envision yourself teaching, kids can be frustrating to teach at times.
Each kid comes with their own attitudes, lifestyles, and learning blocks that you’ll have to break through in order to best teach them. That can be hard to wait around for as some kids require more attention than others.
You’ll have a few troublemakers in your teaching career. Yet you’re the adult, you’re the one that needs to show restraint and lead by example.
Shaming a kid in front of all his peers is non-constructive, you need to have the patience to crack their code at the right moment.
- Ready to Learn
This may seem counterintuitive to being a teacher. After all, you’re the one teaching the subject, shouldn’t you already know everything there is to know? Not exactly.
Not only will the subject you’re teaching change and advance in your 30-40 year teaching career, but your teaching style will also.
You have to be open to trying new techniques, installing new practices, and presenting the information in different ways.
The best leaders are the ones that never stop learning. They try new innovative ways to keep things fresh.
- Enjoy Hearing Yourself Talk
As previously mentioned, you may find times where you’re repeating yourself over and over.
When it comes down to it, teaching is speaking in front of 25-30 kids at a time and presenting information to them. They may also have several questions afterward that you’ll need to answer.
In short, you’ll want to enjoy (or at least be content with) hearing yourself talk almost 75% of the day. The best teachers take this opportunity to engage with their students.
A majority of your career will be spent talking, get acclimated with how to best use the voice that God gave you!
- Optimum Organization
Teaching is done most effectively when the lessons are compartmentalized. There the students will learn the information one piece at a time.
In order to avoid drowning them with information, you have to effectively organize the lessons you’re trying to drive home.
More than that, your day will be sporadic. Five periods of the day you’ll be teaching classes while you may only have an hour each day to grade papers and tests. Your organizational skills will come in handy to use that time efficiently.
- Flexibility
The best teachers are those that keep a flexible approach with every aspect of their job.
For example, you may have planned to cover three chapters of a book in one class period. However, your class isn’t understanding the first chapter, so you had to focus on that chapter and adjust the rest of the week to make up for it.
You may also find your schoolboard asking you to teach subjects you have almost no experience with. Being open to learning and teaching that subject makes you an even more valuable teacher to their school.
If that sounds less than ideal, there are always alternative jobs than the typical teacher role.
- Deal Well with Stress
Stress will come in any career path that you choose, but teachers are on a tighter window to overcome adversity that they face.
If something happens in one class, you have to deal with it and then move on to the next class the following hour. After all, the show must go on!
You’ll be tasked with overseeing the safety and development of hundreds, if not thousands, of kids. That’s no small task, and it comes with plenty of obstacles. You need to cope with the struggles you face, solve them, and help the next student!
- Understanding
Some things in your students’ lives are bigger than the classroom. The troublemaker that makes your life a living hell may be doing so because they don’t get any attention at home.
While you may feel like lashing out at them, being a mentor to them is always a better way to go.
Your ability to empathize with the student and what they may be going through will help you grow as a teacher and a human being.
Develop the Necessary Skills Needed to be a Teacher
Be honest with yourself, some of these skills needed to be a teacher may not come naturally to you. That doesn’t mean you can’t acquire them.
Start thinking of ways that you can work on improving these traits in your life and the reward will be outstanding!
Be sure to check back with Education 2008 often for all the latest news and information on teaching.
