Teaching: what else can a teacher do besides teach?

These are skills that relate to your personality or temperament and which impact upon:

• How you appear to other people and interact with them
• How you approach and deal with tasks
• How you react and feel in different situations

Look through the list of adjectives below. Make a note of those you feel are characteristic of you and those that do not relate to you. Then make a third list of ones you do not feel strongly about one way or another.

Go through your three lists again. Put a star against characteristics that you feel are particularly descriptive of you.

Be honest in your responses. Do not try and portray yourself in a way that you think might impress others. None of these characteristics are superior to any other, but some will relate better to particular jobs.

How you communicate with others is critical to the success of many activities, yet it is easy to take some of these skills for granted.

Forms of communication

Speaking: clearly and effectively in or to a group. Examples might include;

• Introducing a topic to a class
• Giving a presentation
• Collaborating on group projects.  

Influencing: able to persuade and gain the agreement of others. Examples;

• Encouraging unmotivated pupils
• Introducing new extracurricular activities.

Talking: relating easily to a wide range of people, using appropriate language; putting people at ease. Examples;

• Discussing pupils' performance with their parents
• Working in a shop, restaurant or bar.

Writing: clearly and effectively, choosing appropriate style and language. Examples;

• Producing classroom materials
• Writing essays
• Dissertations and reports.

Technology: word processing, email, blogging, design software. Willingness to train in use of new software packages as required. Examples;

• Preparing a portfolio
• Producing posters for an event
• Maintaining a blog
• Generating paper and e-mailshots.

Visual presentation: identifying an appropriate format to put a message across effectively. Examples;

• Using software to produce professional quality handouts, posters
• Creating PowerPoint presentations.

These so-called ‘people skills’ are closely allied to communication skills. You are likely to be able to demonstrate at least some of these skills. See below

Examples of activities that develop and demonstrate these skills 

Team working: working constructively in a group, helping it to achieve its goals.

• Team teaching
• Group projects.

Leadership: taking charge of a task; motivating others.   

• Classroom management
• Any position of responsibility.

Assertiveness:being able to put your point of view firmly without being aggressive.

• Controlling your class
• Active participation in meetings
• Negotiating deadlines for submission of work.

Teaching: instructing people how to perform a task.   

• Teaching practice
• Showing new colleagues at work what to do.

Empathising: understanding another's point of view, identifying and allowing for differences responding effectively.

• Supporting a pupil with academic or personal difficulties
• Actively listening to check pupils’ understanding of a topic.

How do you organise yourself? Do see tasks through to completion? Do you plan ahead or do things at the last minute?

Here are some aspects of planning and examples of activities that develop and demonstrate these skills

Prioritising: being able to rate tasks in order of their importance.   

• Ensuring that national curriculum topics are covered before optional items.

Time management: being able to organise your time well so that important things get done.   

• Deciding how to allocate lesson time
• Combining your studies with a part-time job and other activities. 

Working to deadlines: working within time constraints.

• Having all the materials ready for a lesson
• Getting work in on time.

Planning ahead/organising: being able to formulate a plan.   

• Lesson planning
• Organising a field trip
• Organising social activites, either personal or involving a university society/the student union.

Flexibility: able to adapt readily to new tasks and ways of working. Able to cope with the unexpected.   

• Adapting teaching materials to suit different learning stages
• Starting or changing a part-time job while studying.

Resilience: keeping going despite setbacks, maintaining optimism.   

• Receiving a critical teaching practice report and learning from it
• Being made redundant
• Coping with bereavement.

How do you go about solving problems? There are usually a number of stages, each of which is critical to the process.

Here are some aspects of problem solving and examples of activities that develop and demonstrate these skills 

Identifying the problem: isolating the problem area from the broader issue.   

• Having to teach a lesson on a topic with which you are unfamiliar.

Defining the outcome: what do you want/need to be the end result?

• Knowing the learning outcome that you wish to achieve within a lesson.

Researching:being able to find information from a variety of sources; asking relevant questions; using reference material.

• Accessing relevant information from a range of materials
• Sifting out the important points
• keeping your objective in mind when researching data
• Taking relevant information from lengthy documents to use in course work.

Considering all the options: this can involve creativity - the obvious solutions may not be the best

• Identifying appropriate media; handouts, web pages, pictures etc.
• Looking at other people’s approaches to similar problems and learning from them.

Critical evaluation: weighing up options, deciding on the accuracy/relevance of data, identifying possible issues.

• Looking at learning styles and evaluating which of the possible methods of presenting materials would work best.

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