It’s September and thoughts turn to apple-picking, fall fashion, and school. Top 10 Common Teaching Mistakes For Teachers To Avoid had valuable points on achieving perfection, as I try to do, or avoiding mistakes. Here are 6 tips to improve as a teacher, culled from the article and from Stephen Downes (the first tip):
1) Pace oneself from the start. The most common first-year mistake is being too ambitious, trying to do too much.
2) Get organized before school starts. Toss or sort all papers immediately. Delete or file all documents.
3) Develop a discipline plan from the start. The problems are certainly different in online courses, but it is better to know how to address them before they happen. (I once had a student who cut his nails in class – that was my worst discipline problem ever!)
4) Connect with the school community and share best practices.
5) Ask for help when you need it and before you’re desperate.
6) Give yourself a break. If your evaluations aren’t perfect, figure out what to do differently next time and then do it.
Excellent list. The ones that resonate most with me are the first one (too much ambition) and the last one (give yourself a break). I’ve been teaching several new classes and can see how that could be a problem.
The hard part for me is #2-tossing out old stuff, and deleting old documents. It’s a constant effort to keep from being overwhelmed from the volume of papers and data.