What's your Teaching Style?

This piece takes a closer look at what may constitute a teaching style and encourages other teachers to reveal theirs in the comments section.

A Teaching Persona

A teacher’s persona is very much an extension of his/ her being. If you’re a creative, humorous and well-organised soul, then, guess what, that is how your character will manifest itself in your role as teacher. You will create imaginative role-plays, crack jokes and keep everything well-ordered. (It's no coincidence that these traits have been chosen as the author exhibits them in spades). One’s teaching style therefore is a composite of one’s personified characteristics. While teachers perform their role, they can also entertain, and, by being themselves, can achieve an idyllic state of being. If they don’t mind being in the limelight, they can help learners to be autonomous and effective participants as well as allowing them to enjoy the experience. Passionate-witty-interactive-structured could be described as a teaching style. When introducing yourself to the class, you can explain what your teaching style is; this will give them an inkling of what to expect even before you start to introduce a course.

Evidence of the elements that make up this teaching style would be a highly charged form of enthusiasm that is infectious and is no doubt fuelled by adrenaline and a love for the job. Always seeing the funny side of things and spontaneously following up on these humorous moments helps students to remember examples, to enjoy themselves to feel safe and open to share any thoughts and can facilitate repartee. Next, involving the learners is crucial, and, when this is the case, it's more of a constructive collaboration between all involved.

Delve deeper

Teachers are influenced by many things. We begin with a framework which points us in the right direction, i.e. CELTA. Then, by way of good old trial and error, we slowly shape what kinds of activities we feel comfortable using, and those we don’t. It's only natural that we should try and stay in our comfort zone. Or perhaps you like to think outside the box every now and again. Think back to when you used to have lesson plans with endless dialogue or piles of instructions. That was in the days when everything was new and somewhat unknown. We used lists of speaking activity questions, which we may have memorised by now. We may have spent hours marking work at home alone, which we now do in lessons as a class. It is all part of becoming the teacher you are destined to be. The more you do something, the better you get. This is certainly true, though we also get stuck in our ways, the more used to our habits we get.?The success of activities is another important factor that helps us decide whether we continue to use something or simply discard it. If the student enjoys it, finds it educational and it feels right, it will be worth keeping. Some tasks will be used once and never again. Perhaps they didn’t live up to expectations during a lesson. It’s always a good idea to update and correct any mistakes found on custom made handouts. To keep things fresh and interesting for the teacher, it's never a bad idea to introduce new handouts/ material to courses. This way, it will keep things interesting and it won’t be the same old same old each time around.

Make a difference

Additionally, the personal approach is a teaching style that creates a safe learning environment by giving away bits of personal information (works best 1-on-1), which leads to trust between you and them, and then familiarity makes way for being at ease with one another. Of course, the learner is more likely to open up and freely make mistakes when they feel secure around their teacher. Mentioning family and friends and personal info becomes second nature before very long. This is quite the opposite to classical teaching where the educator would stand in front of the class and lecture without any interaction or personal touch.

In conclusion, the best way to positively impact your learner effectively, as an extension of yourself as a person and a teacher, is to share what you know which is relevant to them and empower them to be the best learners they can be. Give them the tools to find out what they need to know, and how to revise effectively with a solid list of useful websites; they will then be independent learners armed to the teeth with powerful weapons (URL’s), and, after the teacher has led from the front and been a shining example to the troops (the learners), then the students will know what needs to be done and hopefully feel pride in their own learning experience.

If you're a teacher, please feel free to share something about your teaching style in the comments section.