5 Things Teaching Makes You Unexpectedly Good At

Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

2551

Abstract

ecific words I or phrases I wanted emphasized. Doing it on an almost daily basis for years made me somewhat good at it, and no matter what a teacher teaches, they have to read out loud in front of an audience <i>a lot.</i></p><h2 id="fa15">2. Public speaking</h2><p id="3df8">I knew a teacher who gave his students a worksheet, told them “do this,” and then sat back at his desk for the whole class and put his feet up to play on his phone. Kids loved him as a teacher because they had so much freedom in the class, but he would be criticized frequently by other teachers and administrators for not teaching students anything during class and not modeling the activities.</p><p id="77fe">It’s not good teaching to spend the whole class talking. Believe me — I’ve done it and it was completely exhausting and also bored the hell out of my students. Good teaching isn’t a college lecture — it requires a gradual release of responsibility.</p><p id="61f9">But there’s at least a couple of minutes where you have to speak in front of your students every class. Like reading out loud, if you do this every day for a long time, you get used to it. I used to tremble and get nervous every time I had to speak in front of an audience, large or small. But in law school, I just had my final oral arguments in front of a panel of three judges without stuttering or breaking eye contact once.</p><h2 id="e3fc">3. Standing for absurdly long periods of time</h2><p id="f95c">Well, it’s also no secret teaching requires a lot of standing. It requires standing in front of the room as well as circulating around the classroom to make sure all students understand what is going on.</p><p id="702d">If you teach four straight classes, you could be standing for up to five hours at a time. Of course, there are a lot of teachers who do sit the whole class and times when you sit down and just let the students do the work. I’ve been there, too.</p><p id="9443">Unfortunately, standing upright for a long time is associated with increased prevalence of health problems <a href="https://medic.upm.edu.my/upload/dokumen/2020042010403140_MJMHS_0512.pdf">like musculoskeletal disorders</a>, which means it is necessary to take a break from standing for so long. But it is something you get used to after a while.</p><h2 id="d86a">4. Not going to the bathroom for long periods of time</h2><p id="49c2">There’s a simple reason teachers can’t go to the bathroom when they really need to. Who’s going to watch the kids? Are you really going to leave the kids unmonitored?</p><p

Options

id="27e4">I’ve been asked to watch other teachers’ students in times they had to use the bathroom. But personally, I never asked another teacher to do that because a) they had their own classes and b) it was too much of a burden to do so. I remember whole days when the need to go to the bathroom didn’t even cross my mind because of the nature of the job, even when I needed to.</p><p id="3588">Again, this isn’t a necessarily healthy thing to do. And when you have an emergency, well, hopefully, you have time during your planning period or during lunch. But this is another unfortunate reality of being a teacher.</p><h2 id="c008">5. Boundaries</h2><p id="cf46">During my first year of teaching, I answered phone calls on weekends, nights, and sent a lot of correspondences and did a lot of work at times I didn’t need to. To some degree, I still do whenever the need calls for it, but if a problem needs to be handled the next day, I will send it the next day for that work-life balance.</p><p id="f249">Boundaries are important between teachers, their students, parents, and all stakeholders in the education system. You learn pretty quickly what you should not share with students about your life. You learn the balance between being genuine and authentic with students and a certain image you need to give off.</p><p id="7c5c">When I first started teaching, I was 22 years old. One of my students was 20. I wanted to be really cool with and nice to my students instead of the authority figure in the room, which manifested itself in not-so-great classroom management.</p><p id="3a81">But quickly, you learn that you’re their teacher — not their friend, and have to act accordingly.</p><p id="7bd0">There are a lot of great moments of being a teacher, especially when students have those breakthrough moments of understanding and progress. Sometimes those breakthroughs happen in the gradual process of the school year.</p><p id="16aa">But it’s a profession that’s always draining and where there is always a shortage of available staff. That seems to never change, and it’s a problem that always seems to be getting worse. It involves a lot of unpaid labor and an obligation from society to suck it up because it’s for the kids.</p><p id="9814">Because of that, you need a lot of coping mechanisms, survival skills, and learn a couple of unexpected things along the way. None of it makes up for the unforgiving nature of the profession, but for me, at least I’ve gotten a lot better at reading out loud and public speaking.</p></article></body>

5 Things Teaching Makes You Unexpectedly Good At

Not going to the bathroom for long periods of time

Everyone knows there are a lot of skills you need as a teacher. You need to be able to model your thought process so students know what you’re thinking, how to navigate and manage a classroom, and how to teach confusing concepts how students best understand them. You need to know how to write a good lesson plan, how to have an engaging lesson, and more.

All of this is true, but what people don’t know is there are skills you gain that people don’t expect. One of those skills for me personally was learning how to hustle outside of work to make more money, and how to attend graduate school while working a stressful, consuming full-time job.

But a lot of jobs may require that, and there are some unique skills you gain as a teacher that you gain without necessarily trying. They are consolation prizes when the main goal is positive outcomes for students, but I think they’re pretty good or funny consolation prizes.

Here are five unexpected skills you gain from being a teacher:

1. Reading out loud

When I was in school, I hated reading out loud. I had social anxiety. I got nervous. I felt like everyone would judge me and think I was stupid if I read out loud for the class, stumbled over words, or just made mistakes. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to read well, but the thought of reading in front of an audience of 30 peers daunted me and caused me to make mistakes.

Maybe I’m biased as a former English teacher, but you have to do a lot of reading as a teacher, and you have to do a lot of reading out loud. You have to model it for students and help them know how to read words they don’t know. You could always play an audiobook, but I always found something unsatisfactory with an audiobook or other reader’s rendition of the text. It was always too dry, too unengaging, and lacked the necessary prosody and intonation.

I’m not saying my students were completely engaged when I read out loud, but since I had to do it so much, I could control when I stopped and asked a question and what specific words I or phrases I wanted emphasized. Doing it on an almost daily basis for years made me somewhat good at it, and no matter what a teacher teaches, they have to read out loud in front of an audience a lot.

2. Public speaking

I knew a teacher who gave his students a worksheet, told them “do this,” and then sat back at his desk for the whole class and put his feet up to play on his phone. Kids loved him as a teacher because they had so much freedom in the class, but he would be criticized frequently by other teachers and administrators for not teaching students anything during class and not modeling the activities.

It’s not good teaching to spend the whole class talking. Believe me — I’ve done it and it was completely exhausting and also bored the hell out of my students. Good teaching isn’t a college lecture — it requires a gradual release of responsibility.

But there’s at least a couple of minutes where you have to speak in front of your students every class. Like reading out loud, if you do this every day for a long time, you get used to it. I used to tremble and get nervous every time I had to speak in front of an audience, large or small. But in law school, I just had my final oral arguments in front of a panel of three judges without stuttering or breaking eye contact once.

3. Standing for absurdly long periods of time

Well, it’s also no secret teaching requires a lot of standing. It requires standing in front of the room as well as circulating around the classroom to make sure all students understand what is going on.

If you teach four straight classes, you could be standing for up to five hours at a time. Of course, there are a lot of teachers who do sit the whole class and times when you sit down and just let the students do the work. I’ve been there, too.

Unfortunately, standing upright for a long time is associated with increased prevalence of health problems like musculoskeletal disorders, which means it is necessary to take a break from standing for so long. But it is something you get used to after a while.

4. Not going to the bathroom for long periods of time

There’s a simple reason teachers can’t go to the bathroom when they really need to. Who’s going to watch the kids? Are you really going to leave the kids unmonitored?

I’ve been asked to watch other teachers’ students in times they had to use the bathroom. But personally, I never asked another teacher to do that because a) they had their own classes and b) it was too much of a burden to do so. I remember whole days when the need to go to the bathroom didn’t even cross my mind because of the nature of the job, even when I needed to.

Again, this isn’t a necessarily healthy thing to do. And when you have an emergency, well, hopefully, you have time during your planning period or during lunch. But this is another unfortunate reality of being a teacher.

5. Boundaries

During my first year of teaching, I answered phone calls on weekends, nights, and sent a lot of correspondences and did a lot of work at times I didn’t need to. To some degree, I still do whenever the need calls for it, but if a problem needs to be handled the next day, I will send it the next day for that work-life balance.

Boundaries are important between teachers, their students, parents, and all stakeholders in the education system. You learn pretty quickly what you should not share with students about your life. You learn the balance between being genuine and authentic with students and a certain image you need to give off.

When I first started teaching, I was 22 years old. One of my students was 20. I wanted to be really cool with and nice to my students instead of the authority figure in the room, which manifested itself in not-so-great classroom management.

But quickly, you learn that you’re their teacher — not their friend, and have to act accordingly.

There are a lot of great moments of being a teacher, especially when students have those breakthrough moments of understanding and progress. Sometimes those breakthroughs happen in the gradual process of the school year.

But it’s a profession that’s always draining and where there is always a shortage of available staff. That seems to never change, and it’s a problem that always seems to be getting worse. It involves a lot of unpaid labor and an obligation from society to suck it up because it’s for the kids.

Because of that, you need a lot of coping mechanisms, survival skills, and learn a couple of unexpected things along the way. None of it makes up for the unforgiving nature of the profession, but for me, at least I’ve gotten a lot better at reading out loud and public speaking.