Effective Teacher According to Wong & Wong
In the book The first days of school: How to be an effective teacher the authors identify three main components of an effective teacher. The first component is that the effective teacher “has positive expectations for students” (Wong & Wong, 2009, p. 100). Expectations are a key factor determining and forming the most important elements of social phenomena, starting from the actual social order, and ending with the individual motivation of people in situations of social interaction.
Social expectations in the pedagogical process are inherent in all its participants: teachers have attitudes, stereotypes that determine expectations, primarily in relation to students. Every time the teacher enters the classroom, they present a typical interaction situation that they expect to meet in every classroom (Wong & Wong, 2009, p. 103). Special expectations, as a result of previous experience, arise from the teacher in relation to a particular class and specific students. The orientation of their efforts will depend on what attitudes the teacher has towards the students. If the attitudes are optimistic, the teacher will form effective participants in the educational process of their children from children. If the attitudes are pessimistic, students will feel uncomfortable and the lack of psychological comfort will prevent them from mastering the educational program.
The second characteristic of an effective teacher is that they are “an extremely good classroom manager” (Wong & Wong, 2009, p. 118). The lesson should be emotional, arouse interest in learning and foster the need for knowledge. The tone and rhythm of the lesson should be optimal, and the actions of the teacher and students should be completed. Full contact is required in the interaction of the teacher and the students in the classroom, however, at the same time, observance of pedagogical tact should be kept.
Learning activities in the classroom should be manageable. To do this, the teacher needs to implement a differentiated and individual approach to the educational activities of students of the same class. Educators should move away from conservative teaching methods and influence on students, study, master and implement new teaching methods and technologies. For effective classroom management, the teacher must have a high level of knowledge about the object of influence. They include knowledge of the age characteristics of children, their physiological, mental and intellectual level of development. An integral component of effective classroom management is knowledge of the laws of scientific labor organization.
The third knowledge that, according to the authors, an effective teacher should have is how “to design lessons for students masterly”(Wong & Wong, 2009, p. 123). Thematic design serves for determining the optimal ways to implement the educational, developmental and educational functions of the educational process in the system of lessons. This system, depending on the main didactic purpose, can be entered as lessons of various lesson types. The success of thematic planning depends mainly on how clearly the teacher imagines what students should learn.
Therefore, thematic planning begins with a thorough study by the teacher of the curriculum on the subject, educational standards, highlighting the main educational goals and development goals of students. This should be done within the framework of studying the subject as a whole and from the perspective of solving didactic tasks on this topic. Since the results of the education and development of students do not appear immediately after a particular lesson, it is necessary to plan these tasks for a longer period. Only as a result of preliminary work can one understand the meaning of each of the lesson series. Otherwise, instead of a system of interconnected lessons, the teacher will get a random set of lessons that will not be interconnected.
An Effective Teacher in the Personal School Career
I have had an effective teacher that has stood out in my school career. My primary school teacher Mrs. Black possessed the characteristics that make that individual teacher an effective teacher. After analyzing her behavior in class and relationships with students, I came to the conclusion that she had all the qualities that, according to the authors of the book The first days of school: How to be an effective teacher must have an effective teacher.
Firstly, her students felt that Mrs. Black’s expectations from the students were positive. Every time on the way to school, I imagined what would happen on a school day. These expectations were largely influenced by the positive attitudes of the Mrs. Black and the atmosphere adopted by her in the classroom. My expectations were impatient and joyful, because I felt understanding and respect for my personality on her part. Her positive social expectations related to the actual factors of the pedagogical process, as they manifested themselves not only in the ideas of its participants, but also very actively in their behavior (Wong & Wong, 2009). Being the result of a conscious positive attitude towards students, positive expectations of Mrs. Black often provoked the implementation in the classroom of exactly the result that she expected.
Mrs. Black can be called an effective classroom manager. She managed to organize a qualitative structure of relations between participants in the learning process. In her lessons, productive teacher-student, teacher-individual student relationships, between different groups of students, between students within a group and between all students of the class contributed to the development of the curriculum (Wong & Wong, 2009). Mrs. Black used different combinations in the use of forms of organization of cognitive activity. This made it possible during the learning process to overcome the individualistic nature of students’ activities, to increase the role of collectivist principles, to raise the social activity of students and to develop each student in accordance with their abilities. The way that Mrs. Black organized the work in the classroom, allowed the personalities of the students to manifest themselves. She managed to set students up for leadership or participation in the work of the team, competition in the pace of work, a sense of responsibility for the quality of their work and interest in the result of the group’s work.
Lesson design of Mrs. Black can be called personality-oriented; remembering my school years, I understand that she made a lesson plan taking into account the level of development of students in our particular class. She created a positive emotional mood for the work of all students during the lesson. She also always informed at the beginning of the lesson not only the topics, but also the organization of educational activities during the lesson, giving the students a target setting.
Mrs. Black often used tasks that allow the student to choose the type, type, form of presentation of the material and the answer. She stimulated the class to choose and independently apply various ways of completing tasks (Wong & Wong, 2009). At the end of the lesson, we always discussed not only what we learned, but also what we liked or disliked and why. Mrs. Black always discussed with the students what she would like to do again, and what to do differently. Thus, my primary teacher was an effective teacher, the proof of which is her compliance with the characteristics of an effective teacher according to Wong.
Reference
Wong, H. K., & Wong, R. T. (2009). The first days of school: How to be an effective teacher. CA, Mountain View: Wong Publications, Inc.