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Teaching can be considered as fifty percent Knowledge and fifty percent Interpersonal Skills. That means while teaching a teacher should not just maintain the quantity of his lecture but also the quality of lecture. This quality of lecture can be provided with the help of interpersonal skills.
Interpersonal communication is the manner in which information is shared or exchanged between a small number of people, whether they are same or different from each other. These can be healthy as well as harsh. Healthy Interpersonal Skills lead to creative & effective approaches to solving problems and getting work done.
To the fullest extent possible, the task of the teacher is to provide the student with a level of support & guidance. All students have strengths and through better Interpersonal skills teachers can utilize these strengths to enhance learning.
A number of interpersonal skills are needed to assist teaches as they interact with students.
Communication Skills: Communication skills are the most important when we talk about winning the hearts. The tone, volume, rhythm and emotions of the communicator play a vital role while dealing with students.
Empathy: Teachers’ messages must convey empathy i.e. the ability to communicate care and concern along with an understanding of the child’s problem that is, the ability to place oneself in a position to view the problem from the student’s perspective.
Positive Motivation: Good motivation usually produces learning outcomes. Some students do not know why they should study a particular subject. We can show applications of that subject in the areas in which students are interested. Thus they get motivated and take interest while studying that subject.
Feedback: A good teacher is genuinely interested in students’ thoughts, feelings and opinions. Feedback is one way that a teacher can tell how you are absorbing and integrating the materials and lessons. This feedback calls upon the relationship you have developed with the student
Effective Body Language: Body language is the quiet, secret and a powerful tool to maintain healthy interpersonal skills. Good verbal skills combined with effective body language create interest, long-lasting impression on the minds of students and off-course their involvement in the discussion.
Silence: The ability of a teacher to use silence is usually effective. Silence here means giving few more seconds to students to respond to a query. Silence can help the students as:
- Length of students’ correctness of their response increase
- The number of “I don’t know" decreases.
- More number of answers
- Better scoring by students.
Good Sense of humor: A teacher needs to have a keen sense of humor in order to keep students learning & motivate. A teacher who can’t take a joke or give one, who can’t lighten up, who is too serious will not survive.
Be reflective: Remember the party game where a story is started with one person and passed along to others with often humorous distortion? We all filter and distort what we hear. This concept helps a teacher to "pay attention" and often helps the speaker stop and think about what is being said. It's also helpful sometimes to ask your listeners to paraphrase what they think you have said. This concept helps the teacher to keep the attention of the student and keep them participating in discussion.
Ask open-ended questions: Make it a goal to find out what your students think, not just what they know. Ask for information using open-ended questions that begin with "How...," "What...," "When...," "Where...," and "Why." This strategy allows teachers to help clarify a given question for both the child and itself.
Understand and then be understood: Most students don't like being told what to do. They often want a chance to have a say in what goes on in the classroom and a chance to prove it will work. In solving classroom problems, it is better to listen than to direct. Teams can be formed to figure out solutions to problems and teacher can empower them to carry out the solutions. Students who identify what should be done take on greater and greater responsibility for getting it done. Thus a teacher seeks to understand the problem from the point of view of the problem solvers rather than force his own perspective on a solution to be understood. This helps to improve interpersonal skills among students as well as between teacher and students.
Self-disclosure: Often sharing a relevant story of your own experiences in similar situations can prove helpful in opening meaningful dialogue.
Use of Technical Skills: The latest method which is now a days used to improve interpersonal skills with students is by using technical skills too i.e. ability to work with latest teaching aids like computers, multimedia or other technical equipments.
The uses of such technical skills bind the interest of students in their lesson and also keep both the teacher as well as students up to date.
To conclude, students are the future of our nation their future relies on – How they are grown up and brought up in the society. Much of this depend upon teachers, so by cultivating better interpersonal skills among teachers and students so as to make them better learner, the overall personality of students and thereby our nation can be improved. So let’s make Interpersonal Skills crucial ingredients as a part of our life.
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