Improving Your Teaching Skills – 5 Simple Tips

Like any career, teaching is something you perfect over time. Every day is a learning opportunity and every day, you take a step closer to becoming the teacher you want to be. 

However, learning is an active process, and with these five simple tips, you can help yourself become a better teacher. 

1. Embrace New Knowledge

There are so many different areas of teaching and there are always new things you can learn. We’re lucky that we live in an age where we can study online and add to our skills in a way that fits our professional schedule, so make the most of these opportunities. 

Gaining new qualifications such as an alternative education license Wisconsin, will not only help your career prospects, but also help you become a better teacher. The more experiences you expose yourself to, the more you learn, and this can only benefit your teaching. 

2. Ask Why

Why are you teaching what you’re teaching today? Why is it important and how will it benefit your students?

We teach many things because they’re in a curriculum, but often we don’t dig down deeper to ask why we are teaching it and why it is important. When you know the answers to these questions, then you can add an extra layer to your teaching by understanding the link between what you’re teaching and the outcomes you want to achieve. 

3. Self-Evaluate 

Teachers are constantly being evaluated from all corners, but it’s perhaps your own evaluation which is most important. Getting better as a teacher is about making incremental improvements, and you’re likely to make these improvements more quickly if you’re attuned to your performance. 

If you know the things you did well and the things you could have done better each day, then you’ve always got a good idea of how to improve your performance and keep doing things better. Self-evaluation is an amazing tool to help you improve but you’ve got to be actively engaging in it. 

4. Learn from Others 

If you’re working in the teaching industry, then it’s likely you have amazing resources all around you – your colleagues. 

Building good relationships with your fellow teachers is a great way to learn new things and help take your teaching to the next level. The nice thing about learning from a colleague is that it’s up to you. You can take the advice you think is helpful, and leave the bits you don’t think are useful. 

Within your institution there’s probably hundreds of years of experience in teaching, so make sure you’re learning from it. 

5. Get Away from Time to Time

Teaching is one of those careers that can be all-consuming. It’s great to be involved in your career, but there are times when you just need to take a break. 

Find ways to give your mind a rest from the job, and have some time for yourself. Your brain needs rest to function at its highest level, so a little free time can make all the difference to your teaching.