Teaching is an awesome job and no other joy comes close to the satisfaction that a teacher gets watching their students succeed in their lives with the knowledge they ingrained in them. However, at times teaching can become cumbersome and even the best and most experienced teachers might face difficult situations in the classroom.
Especially if you are new at teaching, you might find face some of these challenges early on in your teaching career. As teachers, it is important for you to always have a sense of control in your classroom for teaching your students effectively. However, it is not always possible to stay calm and in control, especially in the face of new challenges.
Therefore, it might be helpful for educators to be aware of the various challenges which are likely to befall them while teaching in the classroom. Whether you teach in a traditional offline classroom or on an online class app, these are the most common challenges which you might face as a teacher in any classroom….
Constant Learning Blocks-
Teachers might tell their students that if they ask a question a hundred times, they will answer it. However, we all know that it’s just hyperbole and everyone can only exercise so much patience. When students struggle frequently at the basic concepts and can’t comprehend and apply what is being taught, despite your best efforts, it is bound to upset you. This can sometimes cause teachers to lash out at their students.
However, that is both unproductive and an unfortunate situation. What you can do instead is determine exactly where it is that the students are losing comprehension and at the same time focusing on bridging the gap and learning about the different challenges of different students.
For instance, it might be that your students are having trouble understanding because they don’t have any pre-requisite knowledge or they don’t have the required recall power, or you need a different approach for getting your point across.
Low Student Engagement-
Student engagement is the most important factor that drives student learning. The traditional instruction-based teaching approach is not as suitable for keeping the student engaged in learning for a long time. Moreover, each student is different and so are their learning needs. There is no one size fits all when it comes to teaching.
Thus, classroom teaching which mostly involves a textual and auditory delivery of study material is seldom suitable for keeping most students in the classroom. What you can do is, try to promote an active learning environment which increases the student participation in their own teaching. Online teaching is a great way of boosting student engagement.
Some of the best apps to teach online, also provide the facility to create course content using a variety of media such as audio, video, text, animation and likewise which makes the study material engaging for a wide range of learners. Moreover, online discussion boards and peer-based teaching approach might also be suitable for enhancing the student engagement in the classroom.
Personalizing your Teaching Approach-
It is well established that every student has different learning needs. Therefore, things which work well for one student might not necessarily work well for other students, if at all. Educators realize this; however, they are limited in their approach and resources for dealing with this situation. This is where educational technology might prove tremendously valuable as it largely simplifies the task of personalizing your teaching by providing many simplistic approaches of personalized learning for students. In general, diversifying your teaching approach is more effective in enhancing the level of personalization in your teaching.
Other Administrative Tasks-
This is one of the frustrating experiences of being a teacher. You are tired from taking back-to-back classes and just when you get a free period, you have pending administrative work which needs to be completed ASAP. Tasks such as maintaining attendance register, planning school activities, curriculum management, making lesson plans and likewise, take up a lot of time and effort on a teacher’s part. It can also affect your classroom teaching performance if you let it.
These are some of the most common challenges which most teachers invariably face at one time or the other in their tenure. It might be helpful, especially for the new and inexperienced teachers out there to peruse through the article in knowing what they can expect while working as a teacher.