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Enhancing life Skills & effective communication for Teachers

Opinion | Articles | Sunny Jacob SJ | 14-Dec-2020

“Life skills is a term used to describe a set of basic skills acquired through learning and/or direct life experience that enable individuals and groups to effectively handle issues and problems commonly encountered in daily life” In other words, Life Skills are abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.  Life Skills include, Decision Making, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, Negotiation Skills, Interpersonal Relationship, Self Awareness, Compassion and Effective Communication. Life Skills are pivotal to success of a teacher. Let us look at each one of them in brief.

Self-Awareness: Self-awareness includes our recognition of ourselves, of our character, of our strengths and weaknesses, desires and dislikes. Developing self-awareness can help us to recognize when we are stressed or feel under pressure. It is also often a prerequisite to effective communication and interpersonal relations, as well as for developing empathy or compassion for others.

What is decision making?: Ability to assess available options, to foresee the consequences of different decisions (actions/non-actions).  Major Life Decisions must include the following elements. 1. GOALS: Develop, Prioritize, attain 2. CHOICE: Of life style, study & food habits, hobbies. 3.  COPING UP: With stress, alcohol, drugs, STD, AIDS 4. CAREER: Choice of profession, further study.

 Critical Thinking:  it is an ability to analyze information and experiences in an objective manner. Critical thinking can contribute to health by helping us to recognize and assess the factors that influence attitudes and behavior, such as values, peer pressure, and the media.

 Creative Thinking:  it is the ability to consider something in a new way. It might be a new approach to a problem, a resolution to a conflict between employees, or a new result from a data set. Creative thinking means thinking outside the box.

 Problem solving:  Problem solving enables us to deal constructively with problems in our lives. Significant problems that are left unresolved can cause mental stress and give rise to accompanying physical strain.

Interpersonal relationship skills: These help us to relate in positive ways with the people we interact with.  This may mean being able to make and keep friendly relationships, which can be of great importance to our mental and social well-being. It may mean keeping good relations with family members, which are an important source of social support. It may also mean being able to end relationships constructively.

Empathy: It is the ability to imagine what life is like for another person, even in a situation that we may not be familiar with.  Empathy can help us to understand and accept others, who may be very different from ourselves, which can improve social interactions, for example, in situations of ethnic or cultural diversity.

Effective Communication: It means that we are able to express ourselves, both verbally and non-verbally, in ways that are appropriate to our cultures and situations. Express opinions and desires, but also needs and fears. And it may mean being able to ask for advice and help in a time of need.

Managing feelings and emotions: includes skills for increasing internal locus of control for managing emotions, anger and stress.  This may mean that we take action to reduce the sources of stress, for example, by making changes to our physical environment or lifestyle.  Or it may mean learning how to relax, so that tensions created by unavoidable stress do not give rise to health problems.  By knowing our positive qualities we are surer of ourselves and more able to accomplish things. Self-esteem is how a person feels about himself or herself. Knowing oneself and feeling good about oneself is an important aspect of the process growing up. Low self-esteem especially among teenagers, often results in a variety of problems and difficulties. Therefore, it is important that adolescents should be helped in improving their self-esteem. By liking ourselves we feel good around other people and better at anything we are doing. In every situation of life we use some skills. Thinking “out of the box” can often find a solution to a seemingly difficult problem. By critical thinking we can analyze all the pros and cons of any situation.

EFFECTIVE TEACHING

Teachers who are effective produce student learning, growth, and achievement. Learning actually means acquiring basic knowledge and skills by the learner. Growth indicates showing acquired progress over time. Achievement is demonstrating an act of accomplishment or attainment.

The Three Characteristics of Effective Teachers: Teachers, who are effective, are extremely good CLASSROOM MANAGERS. They know how to teach a lesson for student LEARNING and MASTERY. They have POSITIVE EXPECTATIONS for student success. Learning and growth in the profession is ongoing.  The better trained you are as a teacher, the more skills you will have in affecting growth in students.

Teaching Strategies: The old adage "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" is equally true of teaching strategies. If the only classroom teaching strategy you know is traditional lecturing, that's the teaching tool that you’re likely to use for all classroom situations. If, on the other hand, you have more tools in your toolbox, you will have the opportunity to choose the most appropriate tool for the task at hand. A creative teacher will equip himself or herself with more tools in hand to handle the class effectively.

 Communication Skills: The teacher uses knowledge of effective verbal, nonverbal, media, and technological communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom. Much of teaching is about sending and receiving messages. Carefully planned and skillfully delivered messages can issue invitations to students that school is a place to share ideas, investigate, create, innovate, and collaborate with others. School can be a place to be understood as well as a place to gain understanding. But without intentional considerations and planning, the messages actually received by the students can be conflicting, confusing, or discouraging.  For this reason, teachers need to monitor their personal verbal and nonverbal communication so it is characterized by clarity, organization, enthusiasm, and sensitivity. Teachers’ oral and written communications need to be models of appropriate grammar, content, and syntax. Effective teachers consistently use active listening skills as well. These include the use of paraphrasing, perception checking, and clarifying questions. Effective teachers also recognize the increasing importance of technology as a tool for student learning and as a major communication resource to be developed.

Communication Skills for Teachers: Teaching is generally considered as 50% knowledge and 50% interpersonal or communication skills. What consists of these communication skills? Positive motivation: create interest, enthusiasm, remove fear, inhibition. Effective body language: gestures, body movements with verbal skills. Sense of humor: do not confuse dirty jokes with humor. Team work: helps in mutual understanding between students as well as teacher. Teachers must be up –to-date with the latest techno-tools for teaching.

Teaching is based on communication, and a teacher who communicates effectively with his/her students is a great teacher.  Instructional communication is the process by which teachers and students stimulate meanings in the minds of each other using verbal and nonverbal messages. In education, communication is essential for  understanding roles and assignments, planning and carrying out learning activities, coordinating  approaches with students, providing information to teachers on student progress and behaviors, and building a positive relationship with students, teachers  and other staff.

 Role of Teacher’s Credibility: Teachers who have higher perceived credibility are also perceived as more effective, more motivated to learn, have higher cognitive learning, participate in class discussions and more engaging in class. Teachers who are perceived as clear are perceived as more effective teachers and liked by students.

 Role of Clarity: Students, who perceive their teachers as clear, learn more than from teachers who are perceived as not clear. Teachers who are clear reduce students' fear or apprehension of communicating in the classroom. When students like their teachers, they like the course content too.

 Role of Humour: An effective teacher uses moderate amounts of humor in the class room. Wit and humour  always make the class better, interactive, alive and effective.

 Teacher Immediacy: Teachers who use affinity-seeking strategies are perceived to be more credible—that is more knowledgeable, trustworthy, and dynamic than teachers who do not use affinity-seeking strategies. Teacher use of affinity-seeking strategies is moderately correlated with student motivation to learn. Teachers who evoke more positive feelings from students enhance the learning climate.

 Factors Facilitate Openness and Accept posture: Try to make your posture acceptable on in the class room It is better for a teacher to stand while teaching.

 

Eye Contact: Eye contact with students shows that you are interested in what they have to say.

Facial Expression: What is shown on your face should match what is on the child's. Make yourself happy, committed, and interested in students. This will make your class more effective.

Distance: Distance from the child shouldn't be too close or too distant; about 3 to 4 feet is the average. Standing too close can make the student uncomfortable, while standing too far away can indicate that you are disinterested in what the students is saying.

Distracting Behaviors: Avoid any distracting behaviours in the class room. Focus on your class and students.

Voice Quality: Your tone should match the child's. It would be inappropriate to be loud if the child is in a quiet mood.

Control your temperament: A good teacher will always in control of his emotions.

Effective Communication is to establish a positive relationship with the students (respect, courtesy, friendship)in the class room. Remember, our job is to encourage students rather than to control. Therefore, always be positive in speaking to the students, avoid "putting them down."  When possible, organize ahead of time and think before speaking. As far as possible use the student's name. When giving directions, get the student's attention first. Speak in a calm manner. Try to maintain eye contact with the student. Minimize distractions. Let them know why the topic is important. Let them know that you are talking to them for their benefit. Use questions to involve the student and monitor understanding. Include examples from the student's experience. Avoid discussing a student's personal problems when you feel uncomfortable about it. If frustration, anger, or boredom occurs.

 Factors Encouraging Student Responses: Pause effectively before and after asking a question:  Pausing before you ask a question gives you time to phrase your question. Pausing after you ask your question allows the student to think about their response.

Roadblocks to Communication: Ordering, commanding, directing, warning, threatening, moralizing, preaching, giving "shoulds" and "oughts”, advising, offering solutions or suggestions, giving logical argument, Judging, criticizing, disagreeing, blaming, name-calling, stereotyping, labeling etc. cold be a road block in our communication with our students.

 Active listening: Listening is an important part of effective communication. A good teacher must            exhibit good listening behaviors and strategies.

 Factors affecting of Listening: Listening can be affected by personal bias, environmental factors, a short attention span, rehearsing a response, daydreaming, hot words, or through the use of filtering.

 Appeal to the three Learning Styles: Auditory, visual and kinesthetic Learning styles must be understood and appeal to all the three in the class room teaching.

 Use of technology as follow-up actions in communication skills: Finally, using technology in teaching learning pedagogy is important for effective teaching and learning today.  Enhancing all these life skills will make our education better, and teaching learning becomes more meaningful and efficacious. Twenty First Century teachers are expected to be experts in Life-skills and effective communication.

(The Author is a Priest, and the Secretary of Jesuit Education, South Asia. He is also Member, International Commission for Jesuit Education (Rome), and National Advisor of Jesuit Alumini Association. He can be reached on sunnyjacobsj@gmail.com).Views expressed are personal

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