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How teachers can Increase their confidence in the classroomThe TEFL lesson planning module (module 9) provides a very good start to direct teachers on how they can increase their confidence while teaching in the class room. This module is pretty much directing teachers to complete lesson plans and self-evaluation forms to help them get through their classes without a glitch and to help them improve their confidence in their next classes by completing the self-evaluation forms. In my view, some of the best ways a teacher can increase their confidence is through having completed many, many very well prepared classes, and also knowing that they have the resources they need available to them at the drop of a hat. So in pursuing a teacher’s confidence in the classroom the particular things I want to focus on is for them to have completed a lesson plan before they go to the class and that they want to know: - the objectives they have set for themselves, - that they have the resources they need have available to them, (including backup plans) - the level of the class they are teaching, - the time it is going to take them to work through the material they are teaching, - the kids who are going to need the most management (while at the same time not directing specific attention to them) - know the material they are teaching really, really well and for them to have people experience, with their kids and also with their colleagues. So these are some of the things a teacher can do in the classroom. But for a teacher to be truly confident they need to be healthy in their home life too. To maintain their teaching discipline also they need to be continually reviewing the things they have learnt and keep interesting for themselves. I was learnt a very important life lesson from a dancing teacher who showed me that when you have a slow song that does not have any music going on in between each beat, as in boom, 1……………., boom, 2…………. boom, 3…etc, the way to make the song interesting for yourself and your partner is to put, what he called, decorations in your dancing in between the beats. Being mindful of putting the color into the dancing where there is no color makes the dance much more fun. So relating that back to keeping myself confident in teaching english and keeping myself interested in the profession, it is important that when I put myself into my knowledge maintenance process that I am mindful of the way that I am re-enforcing the knowledge that I have. That I challenge myself in certain ways and that I add different techniques to the way that I am learning this or that and that I also undertake this process in the classroom so that the information that I present to my students is less likely to be presented to them in a boring way. So in closing the points I have made here relate strongly to my belief that confidence will be obtained both from really good preparation techniques and through maintaining a very good discipline, while being respectful and gentle, in such that I keep my knowledge sharing fun for both myself and the people I am teaching. In doing that everybody will reap the benefits and I will always be able to be a teacher who is teaching with confidence.