Top tips - January 2007

Admin will be the bane of your life if you don’t know what you need to get, pump out and verify each day. Get the office staff to help you out if no one else will, with 20 of everything: behaviour referrals, punishment exercises, positive notes, headed notepaper, envelopes … And when you’ve got five left, go and get some more.

If you get printouts of your class lists, use them. Don’t waste time copying names into that lovely school diary you bought. Printouts are efficient and you can photocopy them for as many tasks as you need: register, grades, punishments, pupil birthdays …

If you are going to be using several classrooms then get yourself a box with a lid (stops nimble fingers ‘borrowing’ your board pens). Never leave the box open and make sure it’s got one of everything you need for the day and a back-up.

Get to know what technology is in the rooms you are likely to be teaching in. If you want to use the interactive whiteboard but it’s in another room, just ask nicely. Your colleagues might not mind swapping rooms occasionally. At the same time, start asking the ICT co-ordinator at the school for your own!

The ICT co-ordinator is your friend. If you want something to make your teaching and the students’ learning better, just ask. When I wanted a projector I had to go every day, with a smile, of course, for six weeks. But I got one.

Having resources pre-made on your laptop sounds great and can save you when you have 10 minutes to spare at the end of a period. But work on some learning games which need no technology, ones you can do with a whiteboard or with no resources at all. The MFLE website carries some nice ideas which could be adapted to any subject. Check out their creative teaching, games and warm-ups.

If you plan on using the internet to show some information, listen to audio or watch a video, try to see if you could do any of it offline. It saves time (no waiting around for pages to load) and saves you if the internet goes down.
You can save web pages to your hard drive or just leave the page open on your laptop when you close the lid to bring it to school. Audio and video can sometimes be downloaded to your computer, or you could use a piece of free software to ‘lift’ the audio from a live stream. Check out Audio Hijack for the Mac or Total Recorder or Hot Recorder for the PC.

If you’re teaching a qualification course, even if it’s not the first time you’ve taught it, make sure you have the most up-to-date documents from the principal teacher. Arrangements can and do change. The SQA subject pages carry the most up-to-date versions of documents.

Get involved in professional forums and associations. Modern languages teachers can become part of the Modern Foreign Languages Environment (MFLE). This is a good way to find out what the issues are outside your classroom, find out what events are going on, discover what funding is available, pick up new ideas and get some help. National subject conferences are also good places for new ideas.

Taking part in a lunchtime club or helping out in an after-school event, even if it is just for a term at a time, will not just help your CV but will enrich your life with the kids. Seeing your students outside the classroom makes them see you as a human being – and vice versa. It’s also a good excuse to learn to do something new or to keep fit.