The New Year marks a fresh beginning and at Smile and Learn we have plenty of New Year’s resolution ideas to improve the teaching and learning experience.
- Create a student-friendly environment: it’s fundamental to start the new trimester with a calm, positive attitude. You already know your students and are aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Let this help you improve your teaching. Take a genuine interest in how they feel about starting their new trimester and which areas should they focus more on, as opposed to the beginning of the school year. Your objective is to create a student-friendly environment and build trust in the classroom to help learners feel safe.
- Pursuing innovation: innovation goes beyond ICT as it is more about the meaningful merging of digital resources and educational material. Technology is a broad-span tool that helps students practice and consolidate what they learn. Using quality teaching material is paramount to benefitting from ICT in education.
- Stay motivated: remember why you went into teaching. Apart from being a huge responsibility, teaching is a stimulating, ever-changing profession. Try to stay motivated, always trying to do things better.
- On-going professional development: aside from courses, master degrees and specialized reading, nothing beats real teaching experience. Try to learn from your colleagues and students. If you’ve been a teacher long enough, you know student curiosity and many skills can teach you lots.
- Create a space for dialogue: it’s no secret that some children find schooling challenging. Dynamics of abuse can be tackled creating a space for dialogue where students feel safe enough to share experiences and those things that trouble them most.
- Keep an eye out for new teaching methods: gamification, flipped classroom or project-based learning are only a few of those teaching strategies that can help heighten children’s abilities and skills. Give them a try!
- Make a change! The future lies in your hands. Education is a pilar to a better world.
