If you grew up wishing you were a teacher and you finally become one, the one of the questions that you might be asking yourself is how you can be effective as an educator. One of the standard interview questions for a teacher is what do you think is the most important quality of a good educator?

Everybody has a different answer for this question because education means something different to everybody. But there are some things that come up more often than others. If you want to be an effective teacher, then you have to be passionate about what you are teaching and why you are doing it. Teaching, much like nursing and other similar professions, are often thankless tasks for those doing it. You can introduce a classroom cash economy reward system and discipline and rules, but you need to be effective at maintaining it. You won’t get paid as much, you won’t find as much wealth or anything like that, but you will find a lot of happiness. In the role, however, that all depends on whether you are able to be an effective teacher or not. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some tips that can help you to be a more effective teacher in front of your class.

1. You need to be patient. It’s one of the most effective qualities any effective teacher can have. You will have to repeat and model directions several times and still have a student ask you what to do. So you have to maintain your patience to be able to stay effective as a teacher. If you want people to learn from you, then you have to give them a reason to want to learn and being a role model is one of the first things you can do. Patients can be used in pretty much every single situation. If you are emotionally intelligent, your children that you teach will learn that from you. Patients can also help your teacher, helping teachers not to react in a moment when students are not on task. The children that you are going to teach can often be disrespectful, so you’re going to have to learn to hold yourself in that moment and show them the behavior you want them to display rather than reactive behavior.
2. Effective teachers have empathy and compassion. If there’s one thing you’re going to learn in your teacher training, it’s that teaching is a constant exercise in stepping outside of yourself and your perspective. You have to step into the perspective of the children who you teach and learn them for who they are. The kids that you teach have to know that you care before they can learn from you. You have to teach the child before you can teach a curriculum, and you have to know the child to be able to do that. If you have empathy and compassion for those that you are teaching, they are more likely to respect who you are and want to learn from you in the first place. You’re always going to find one or two kids that challenge you in the classroom as that’s just the way children are when they are trying to learn, but this is where you have to hold your own.
3. Effective teachers are flexible and adaptable. Every school year is different and every kid you teach is different and you have to be able to think on the fly. Whether you’re teaching primary years or secondary years, you have to be open minded to change. So many of the educators out there agree with this because there’s nothing constant in teaching. The curriculum is always upgrading, and the rules of the classroom are always changing too. Good teachers have to be able to adapt to the changing needs of their students, especially as they move from classier to class year. You’ll have new administrators, new colleagues, and new technology to handle while you’re also trying to plan lessons and educate those lessons. With so many different needs from both parents and students, teachers need to find their feet flexibly and learn to accommodate and meet students where they are at rather than pushing them too hard to be too much. You have to be able to think on your feet, so flexibility is important to go with the flow.
4. You have to be passionate. When a teacher is truly passionate about the topic they are teaching, they’ll be able to inspire and motivate. Teaching is a tough gig and you need to be able to push yourself out there and usually out of your own comfort zone. You want the kids that you teach to thrive and to do well, but it’s more about exam results and getting the right marks. It’s about showing them that they can be passionate about what they are passionate about too, and do it without abandoning. The driving force behind every lesson plan or decision that you make as a teacher creates the foundation for a life changing relationship with your students. If you have a passion for education, then you’ll always find a way to meet the demands of the job, even though the demands are huge.
5. Effective teachers are kind. It doesn’t matter how professional you are or how good at your job you are, students are not going to learn from you if you are not kind. You’re in the business of teaching a human being, which means that you don’t just teach them the subject, but you teach them to be good people who are empathetic and kind. You teach them how compassion can get them further in life than anything else, and you teach them that you are understanding as an adult. In the world today, kids are getting so much more information than ever, and it’s not just information, but misinformation via social media and via quite dangerous channels such as TikTok and YouTube. Children need to have examples of good people in their world and as a teacher you are going to be one of their main examples.
6. Effective teachers learn to collaborate. Not only will you learn to be able to give good ideas, you’ll be able to learn to ask for help, to share, and to communicate with coworkers and their families. Good teachers have to be able to ask for help and find help where they can get it. Collaborating with your colleagues doesn’t make you ineffective as an educator, but it means that you are doing your best to teach the children that you are teaching. You’re going to have a lot on your plate as a teacher, so take the offers for help and ask for suggestions. You also need to be able not to take things personally.
7. An effective teacher is a professional. You’re going to deal with negative colleagues, frustrating parents and difficult kids in your class, but never having any regrets is how you become a professional educator. Professionalism is a given in any job but in teaching it’s going to be one of the most important qualities that you can have to be good at what you do. You’re going to be able to affect change for the kids that you teach in your class so you need to be able to be a professional in every avenue of your teaching life.

Being an effective teacher is going to have a life changing impact on the kids that you teach. Now that you know how to do that, go ahead and change the world.