The reality of the situation is many teachers are overworked and often tired. This can be a challenge to well meaning administrators that want to provide them with additional tools of the trade. Here are five teacher training workshop ideas that most teachers will be appreciative of, happy to attend and will even improve their overall well being.
1–Classroom management
As someone who has been in the front line for many years, this is the scariest part about teaching. How can I control my class? How can I make sure that everyone has been acknowledged? What should the classroom design be to accommodate every learning style? How do I manage students working in different groups, at different levels? How do I ensure that once I move to the next group, the previous group keeps going rather than just chatting among themselves? How do I finish lessons on time? Classroom management is a discipline of its own and it includes some knowledge of psychology, counseling, self-confidence and more.
2– How to optimize parental engagement in the learning process
Parents involvement and support is pivotal in a child’s learning journey. Most teaching programmes do not teach you communication skills, how to deal with questions and complaints, how and when to reach out to parents or how to present a situation in order to get their cooperation. Almost everyone appreciates teacher training workshops that provide ways to help parents feel comfortable that teachers can help their children.
3–How to give better instructions
It seems like knowing how to teach is more important than knowing the subject matter. How to make others understand the subject via scaffolding language, appropriate vocabulary for different developmental stages, length of speech, demonstration skills, use of realia, gestures, concept checking questions, etc. Using subject specific vocabulary versus meta-language is another teacher training workshop idea most teachers would find helpful.
4–How to motivate students
All teachers want their students to value education, look interested in the classroom, participate when asked a question, engage in subject related discussions and cooperate when working in groups. Teachers need to understand their students’ tempers, interests and abilities and somehow reach out to all these individuals and make the lesson interesting for the whole class. Teachers also need to master the latest applications and technologies. They need to become motivational speakers, motivational technophiles and masters of interpersonal relationships.
5–Learning the best way to teach… a particular concept
There’s a constant change of the subjects that need to be taught and what exactly to teach within those subjects. Teachers need to learn and adapt throughout their careers. Ministries of education come up with new subjects, more useful and adapted to the present society and leave out parts of some subjects considered redundant information.
Do you agree with the above? What other teacher training workshop ideas would you like to share with us?