Make your lessons a little more interesting

Teacher’s MindOne of the biggest challenges that a football coach may face is selecting the best players for his team. After selecting the team, the coach will always bear the brunt of the supporters whenever the players fail to put up a good show on the pitch and lots of praise when the team wins its games. Sometimes the coach lets a player on the pitch because he believes in him but unfortunately such a player may fail to impress the supporters of the team with his performance. The calls for such a player to be substituted or even the coach himself to be fired can be very threatening to any football coach. Interestingly, the football scenarios described above sometimes occur in the academic sphere as well, setting almost insurmountable challenges for head teachers. A member of staff, who the head teacher is very sure, can teach may fail to meet the expected performance levels. Usually under such circumstances, the students will complain of their teacher not being up to the task. In some cases the students will expect a change of teaching approach from the teacher concerned. In extreme cases, that same teacher’s dismissal may be all they want. Teachers generally learn the same things while in their different teacher training institutions. However the tricks employed in class may largely differ from one teacher to another. Surprisingly some basics can be prescribed to alleviate the problem of learners rejecting their teacher. Any teacher in this world ought to understand the psychology of the learners before him or her. This knowledge can help one to know when and how best the students may wish to study. Armed with such information, a good teacher can then embark on drawing out the best plan for his/her students to achieve success. For starters learners need to enjoy your lessons as this can go a long way in motivating them to attend and even give their best during the lessons. Just like Arsenal football club, sometimes you need to have some form of entertainment as the game goes on. In other words, learners should find your lesson interesting to attend regardless of their level of understanding. It is a well known fact that if students detest a particular teacher, then they will lose all the interest in that teacher’s subject and thus perform poorly. Students usually have many subjects to study and therefore can easily choose to pay less attention during a certain subject with the hope of doing better in another subject. Learning can be made more interesting in order to get the learners on board in several different ways. One way of doing this is by using examples that students can relate to. For example if the text book you are using has got examples or names from Nigeria or Kenya then replacing them with local names that students can relate to is a good way to get their attention. Use a friendlier approach while teaching. Do not simply intimidate the students all the time. Instead, you have to keep encouraging them to do their best in all their endeavours. Publically scolding a student to the level of embarrassment may not be a good idea. More importantly, a good teacher is one who involves the learners in the lesson more and more. They need to feel that they have a role to play in their learning. The teacher should not simply portray an image of an all-knowing source of knowledge. Let the students have a chance to freely contribute answers and arguments on any topic before them. Young learners have dozens of distractions and therefore a great teacher has to go over board to draw and maintain their attention. Once a teacher has managed to make his/her lessons a little more interesting then students will always be looking forward them with the necessary enthusiasm for success. ssenyonga@gmail.com