Acts of Teaching 13: Problem - Solving Skills of Effective Teacher

Teachers may someday see students deprived from their basic needs - either their primary
needs or their secondary needs. Although, it does not only apply to those with low
socioeconomic status (SES). Even high SES students can be deprived of their basic needs
(water, food, rest, and safety).
There are a few classroom-related problems that teacher faces.
1. Affiliation. It means the teachers need to establish and maintain good
relationships with others in the school. This includes students, colleagues, staffs,
and administration.
2. Control. Control means the need of the teacher to have students behave well or
appropriately. Students should be reasonably quiet, orderly, courteous, honest, and
they should show respect to others and to the things around them. If students do
not behave appropriately, two things can happen. First, hatred can be built
between the teacher and the student. Second, teachers can be seen as an
ineffective classroom managers by other teachers, administrators, or parents.
3. Parent Relationship and home conditions. Home conditions play a big role in
building students education - their parents or caregivers. If you can involve
parents in building their childs education, good results will follow.
4. Student Success. It is defined as the need teachers have to help learners to be
successful academically and socially. It is indeed an important goal, although
unfortunately, many teachers struggles with this. Usually, students success
problems are related to teachers perception of insufficient student interest,
students who have special needs, and teachers personal instructional limitations.
5. Time. A lack of time could be a serious problem or teachers. Having no time to
prepare for class, to complete the planned work, and to diagnose and evaluate
learning could be fatal in class. Time becomes less and less if the teachers have to
teach large classes, increasing number of classes, increased emphasis on testing,
and the assignment of non-instructional tasks. Not to mention the lack of time to
do personal tasks due to the amount of work they must take home.
 It is better to avoid problems rather than already having it. In order to prevent problems,
requires skills, depending of the relating concerns. The more abilities a teacher masters,
the more concerns/issues he/she can prevent.
A problem is solved or resolved only when you are able to either give up the goal, or get
closer to it, while at the same time avoiding unpleasant side-effects. You can follow the
problem-solving approach to try to solve your problems. What is the problem, who has
the problem, what is your goal, is the goal important, what are the obstacles, what are
your strategies to overcome the obstacles, what are the side-effects of doing a certain
solution, etc. are questions that may help you in resolving your problems.
When we meet a problem, we should not be immediately irritated by it and complain
about it all day. But rather, we should try to solve it rather than blaming your
surroundings and the past. Instead of looking for problems in others, try to identify and
solve it, like in the problem-solving approach, for example. And you should not expect a
perfect result when trying to solve a problem - it does not always happen that way.
 Acts of Teaching 14: Reflective Skills of Effective Teachers
Making exciting lessons would help the students understand the important parts. To do it,

the teacher need to have a firm preparation, so the points that are trying to be given does

not differ from the actual execution.

Teacher needs to build students interest and develop them.

Sometimes not all plan goes well and as good as what we would expect, but from there

we can observe and reevaluate what our students focus or interest is.

Being able to reflect will make you overall a better teacher. Reflection is something that

you can use in order to apply better teaching by looking back at the past results.

Reflective teacher should have: deliberate, open-minded, responsibility, sincere, and

spirit of inquiry.

Benefits of reflecting on teaching:

Reflection holds both immediate and long-term benefits for the teacher.

Reflection can enhance your learning about teaching and increase your

ability to analyze classroom event.

Reflective thinking can improve classroom life, monitor the teacher and

stimulate the teachers personal and professional growth.

Developing Reflective Thinking

The Reflective Process:

Descriptive: describing significant aspects of a classroom event or concern

(describe what happened).

 Comparative: explore alternative perspectives or interpretations that help

you understand why the event describe that way (ask yourself or others

how they interpret or view a situation).

Evaluative: making a judgement about how best to proceed with the next

steps or making change (result in change).

Becoming a Reflective Teacher:

Dialogue journals: powerful tool for promoting reflection.

Portfolio: provides a structured opportunity to document and describe

your teaching, to connect this to what you know about teaching and

learning, and to reflect on how and why you teach the way you do.

Action research: process of conducting classroom research to answer

questions or solve problems about teaching and learning involving a

specific group of students in particular setting.

Laboratory experience: contrived teaching experiences carried out on

campus, rather than in an actual classroom setting.

Reflective teaching: developed to help pre-service and in-service teachers

become more thoughtful teachers.