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Wednesday, November 16, 2016

The art of the superstar teacher! Teach like a movie director in the classroom!

The art of the superstar teacher!
Teach like a movie director in the classroom!
By Sayed
Abuelmagd

Preface Have you ever dreamed about
becoming a superstar teacher? Do you want to be a truly creative,
humorous learning professional?
Do you want to show the students how your subject matter impacts the world?
If your answer is YES, then welcome to my book “The art of a superstar teacher”.
In it:
You will find wisdom, heartfelt advice, inspiration and the beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and interactions of the superstar teachers and why they are different.
You will get Creativity, which is the expression of our originality.
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You will learn how to be able to connect experiences you've had and synthesize new things.
You will possess the domain of awareness where you experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love
and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention.
You will discover that this book is a great motivator because it makes you interested in what you are doing. It
gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. It gives you the possibility of some sort of achievement. It makes your life more fun and more interesting.
This book makes you stop and look at things that no one else has bothered to look at.
This book will teach you how to build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students.
After reading this book, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and
accomplishment.
Read this book and keep moving forward. Read it and keep opening up new doors. Read it and keep doing new things. Read it and keep leading yourself down new paths.
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The book helps you stay mindful.
You will feel that what you bring to the world is
completely original and cannot be compared.
In it, you will find the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability.
You will learn how to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge, how to touch human feelings
and how to push students out of their comfort zones.
New features include: Quick, easy, specific steps that make a difference in teaching and learning.
You can find the information you need and you will be able to share with us the happy moments of exciting school life and the immense joy and satisfaction in seeing children learn and thrive in your class.
You will find
The Resume
The First Interview
The Demo Lesson
The Principal/ Superintendent/Supervisor Interview
The most important goal is to maintain standard of ethical behavior.
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“Be a superstar teacher” is the roadmap to excellence that lies within:
You will learn how to create powerful learning environments that will help all students make dramatic progress and help your students climb the mountain to college. This book provides more evidence that highly effective teaching is learnable—that many more teachers can draw from the tactics of their most successful colleagues in order to realize educational equity.
The book has captured the specific, practical techniques used by the superstar teachers in the best modern schools. Any teacher, principal, or policymaker who is interested in what it takes on a classroom level to close the achievement gap should read this book.
This book focuses on what matters most, people! It is clear and to the point about what matters most in leading school. It provides practical ideas that make so much sense. You will be on your way to becoming a *superstar* teacher.
This is a great book for teachers. Everything is simply stated and concise. It's a great framework with which to create your own personal teaching philosophy.
You will learn how to inspire students to become great.
This is a very inspiring book for educators. This book is considered a "Must-Read" for all involved in pedagogy.
Be the teacher that they remember. 5
Improve your communication skills and find the techniques that work best for you.
Structure effective lesson plans and get the most out of your students.
Encourage good behavior and create a positive classroom atmosphere.
Build good relationships with your students, their parents and your colleagues.
Deal with the paperwork, get involved with extra- curricular activities and develop your career.
You will learn how to start nurturing children’s motivation and curiosity in learning. It is also an important time to begin teaching them the essential learning skills as well as fostering their innate talent and potential. Our core objective is to build a solid foundation for your future academic advancement and personal development as a teacher.
You will be kept up-to-date with the latest theory and research in early-childhood development. This is to ensure that you can be given the best possible opportunities to develop learning skills and potential to the full.
Be a gift to the world!
In this book:
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You will learn how to inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.
You will be on your way to becoming a *superstar.
The market for teachers will become more like the market for actors, a winner-take-all market with greater
inequality and very big payments at the top.... Bigger markets support larger salaries, so the best teachers will earn much more in an online world.
To be a fantastic teacher, you must teach like a director.
Inspire yourself and others with understanding the dynamics of change
The book covers a range of topics, from behavior challenges and parent engagement to motivating students and making lessons meaningful.
The book offers effective teaching techniques to help teachers, especially those in their first few years, become superstars in the classroom. These powerful techniques are concrete, specific, and are easy to put into action the very next day. Training activities at the end of each chapter help the reader further their understanding through reflection and application of the ideas to their own practice.
Students must learn meaningful relevant information that connects to their world and the world in which they will live as adults. Students should take an active role in their
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learning rather than as passive recipients of information passed on by textbooks and by teachers who do little more than lecture.
The book provides the real world connection to the learning. The goal is not only to help students learn but also to help them put the information into long term- memory.
Among the techniques:
How to move students from the blank stare or stubborn shrug to giving the right answer every time.
When students fail to successfully complete a basic task, from entering the classroom quietly to passing papers around, doing it again, doing it right, and doing it perfectly, results in the best consequences.
How to use Scratch to imagine, create, play, share, and reflect. In the process, refine your programming and artistic skills -- and you are developing as a creative thinker. Our ultimate goal is a world full of playfully creative people who, continue to learn.
If you're angry with your students, it usually means you should be angry with yourself. This technique shows how to effectively address misbehaviors in your classroom.
Always keep in mind that what’s good is what works in your classroom.
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Chapter one
Create imaginative scenarios
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre. Gail Goldwin
When pupils come to a lesson they expect to do normal things, like reading, writing, looking at textbooks and so on. What they do not expect is for you to present them with an imaginative scenario, ask them to take on a character and then invite them to dive into that scenario to see what they can discover. At nursery and in the first few years at school, children role-play in various different settings (a home corner, which becomes a shop, a doctor’s surgery and so on). As they get older, they get less and less chance to experiment through imaginative play. This is a shame, as doing so is a great way to engage students and to help them learn.
Imaginative scenarios work so well because:
They are unexpected and unusual.
They encourage a healthy sense of curiosity in your classroom.
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They let students live the experience and get immersed in learning.
They require students to use a wide range of thinking skills.
They are relevant and connected to real life.
They are a lot of fun!
Choose an imaginative scenario to suit what you are teaching, and also to fit the age of the students with whom you work. Older students respond very well to becoming detectives and investigating a crime scene; younger children enjoy being explorers and going on a treasure hunt. You can add writing and speaking tasks as an extension of your imaginative scenarios. For instance, a crime scene activity lends itself to a police report, a taped interview, a courtroom scene and so on.
To get the most out of imaginative scenarios, follow these tips:
Incorporate plenty of prop for the students to handle. Use some costumes for you or for the students.
Add some authentic extras, such as police crime-scene tape.
Appeal to all five of your students’ senses.
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Ask the students to take on adult attitudes and approaches, just like the characters they are playing.
You can use imaginative scenarios in a whole range of subject areas, not just in Drama. A crime-scene scenario works brilliantly in English lessons and also in Modern Foreign Languages ( talking about what happened).Science, Math (drawing in an accurate plan) and so on.
Remember their names and use imaginative rewards.
Here are some suggestions:
Treasure box: The teacher has a box full of interesting treasures, and the students get to pick their own prizes.
Ask me what I did: The student is given a badge saying “Ask me what I did” this encourages other teachers and students to ask him, and by doing to reaffirm how well the student has worked or behaved.
The lesson is straightforward. Kids live in a world of novelty and uncertainty, and they are doing their best to figure out how to make sense of it. Why do you think kids will watch The Care Bears Movie over and over again? It gives them a slight iota of mastery in a chaotic world. Teachers can help by providing some consistency.
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Don't make the mistake of confusing consistency with tedium. There is always room for regular doses of intrigue and challenge. Just make sure that you are equally dependable as a safe haven for children to return to and fuel up as needed.
There is still plenty of playing, singing and crafts in the classroom but it is often balanced with more rigorous writing, reading and math lessons. The children also continue to learn and get used to the routines of school, how to work in groups and how to be a successful student.
You will see that participants in a play often achieve higher standardized test scores in the future and generally excel in school. In addition, they develop strong social skills as they engage in more child-to-child interactions and develop their interpersonal skills.
Here are my top tips for getting hired to teach:
In order to help you understand, I will lay out the backbone of how to be a superstar teacher. Ask yourself:
1- Who am I?
2. Where am I?
3. When is it?
4. Where have I just come from?
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5. What do I want?
6. Why do I want it?
7. Why do I want it now?
8. What will happen if I don't get it now?
9. How will I get what I want by doing what? 10. What must I overcome?
1. Who am I?
The first question is dealing with the type of person you are. I'm sure if I asked you that question, you would be able to tell me about your family background, your parents, grandparents, siblings. You would be able to describe them in detail. Also the house you grew up in, what it looked like, inside and outside. Your favorite room, what you could see out of your bedroom window, the smells you remember. Your earliest childhood memories, the kind of games you played, family holidays. Your education, favorite teachers, best friends, times you got into trouble. Your first job, your likes and dislikes, influences, attitudes, anecdotes. All these good, bad, funny, interesting experiences shape us into who we are today. Most people don't walk around with all these memories on their shoulders like baggage. They've seeped into our being, our muscles, our subconscious, allowing us just to be, to exist.
When you play the character of a teacher in class, you should know the character of a teacher as well as you
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know yourself, so you can just exist and live. Of course that doesn't just magically happen, nor does it evolve just from rehearsals. As a teacher you have to plant those memories, anecdotes and backstory.
So how do you build a superstar teacher?
Fill your mind with images - not facts and figures. The more visceral your understanding, the better.
Use your imagination to flesh out the details you've gathered and bring them alive. Don't underestimate the power and the necessity of your imagination in the teaching process. You can't use your imagination without the backup of research and reading. Nor can you use your imagination alone.
2. Where am I?
You might find a description of the classroom you're supposed to be in, including details such as the style of the furniture. What does it mean to you though? Is your character supposed to be familiar with the surroundings? Is it the first time you've entered this classroom? Is it a cosy cottage? We usually behave differently depending on our surroundings. You need to establish your relationship with your environment because this affects the way you use yourself. For example, you wouldn't start walking around, touching ornaments and putting your feet up if it wasn't your home. The geography will have an impact too: playing someone from very cold northern climates such as Norway or Russia will be different to playing someone in a baking Mediterranean climate such as Italy or Spain.
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3. When is it?
We need to know what season it is, what year, what time of day. People expressed themselves differently then and didn't slouch or use modern gestures.
4. Where have I just come from?
Whatever the situation, you should always know your previous circumstances at all times. It can be good fun inventing it, and no entrance should ever be the same. Just think about real life: do you always enter your house in the same way every night? No. Where you come from will have conditioned your mood.
5. What do I want?
This is a key question. "Want" means what do you need, what is your intention, your motivation, your action? You should never walk on stage of the class just to play a scene. You should always have an objective. Often in a good preparation, an objective is written into your preparation book: to end the affair, to propose, to move out. Your action can change from lesson to lesson but you should always work out what you are meant to be doing.
You must have a life on stage of your classroom, you must have a purpose for walking and talking, otherwise you are in danger of "just being a boring teacher", which is fake. Don't forget you're trying to be truthful and three-dimensional, and in real life, no one ever comes into a class and stands with their hands by their sides or sits with their hands in their lap and just talks.
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6. Why do I want it?
You must always have a strong justification for your action. All right, perhaps in real life we don't always have a strong justification for everything we're doing but, particularly in the classroom, you always need one. Most lessons present a heightened version of reality (this can be different for the naturalistic performances and stories we see on television, particularly in soap operas. Having a strong justification means you have a strong motivation.
7. Why do I want it now?
The "now" gives you an immediacy that is crucial in teaching. You must know why your motivation has to be right now, not before, not later but now.
8. What will happen if I don't get it now?
The stakes should always be high. Otherwise so what? The consequences of not getting what you want should always be very important to you. If the high stakes are not clear to you in your career, you need to invent them, otherwise it will come across that you're not bothered at all about the outcome.
9. How will I get what I want by doing what?
This question brings us on to how you break down a script. How do you know how to play the line as opposed to how one should say the line? There's a big difference.
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You need to work out how you are trying to affect the children with what you are saying.
One way of doing this is called "actioning" your text. Break your lesson up into chunks: every time you have a new change of thought, you need to find a transitive verb, a verb that is active, such as to beg, to entice, to charm, to get sympathy (a good thesaurus is very handy here). Remember that this technique is not about the emotional content of what you are saying or feeling but about what you want the children to feel psychologically. By playing these chosen activities you are trying to make the teacher that you are playing opposite feel something specific in order to further your action.
So, you have to think: how can I affect the children by doing what? At this stage you should know who your character is, and your choice of active verbs should be informed by your character choice and not your personal choice. If the lesson were about loving, open, sweet, sensitive persons, you would choose verbs such as to plead, to get sympathy, to reason, as opposed to verbs that might reflect another type of character, such as to demand, to threaten, to hurt. If in the preparation a choice doesn't work then you can change your choice. Nothing should be initially set in stone.
I like to call this process "scoring" your text. Just as a musician or singer would rely on their score to know how to sing or play their song, a teacher works out how to present the lesson, novel or play. Once you've done it, you have to play it fully, otherwise it's pretty pointless. The challenge is the execution of it. It's time-consuming initially to find the right verbs, but once you have them
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and tested them in your preparation book, not only will you have given your performance light and shade but also depth. It also means you do not have to fall into a dreadful cliche performance by thinking of how to say the lessons and what you should be feeling. This technique allows you to be free and truthful without playing external emotion. It's really about what you don't say and trusting that actions will speak louder than words.
10. What must I overcome?
Every teacher should always have an inner and an outer obstacle. The outer obstacle is the resistance to obtaining your action. The inner obstacle is your inner conflict, which you must always plant in a scene even though it can change. There must always be a problem you are trying to overcome. If you think of yourself in life, you're never without an inner obstacle. You'll have seen scenes on stage of the school where the inner obstacle has not been properly planted: you get a load of the headmaster just shouting, just playing the aggression. If the inner obstacle is there, the anger, fear or hate, for example, then you've got something to fight against in the scene. Much more interesting.
Teachers may believe that they can do without formal training. But I have worked with untrained teachers who were struggling to be able to reproduce what they were able to do in the first take. Natural ability will get you so far, but it's the trained teachers who know what they're doing and how they're doing it and can produce that emotion take after take.
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To fully transform into a good teacher, to be truthfully and emotionally connected needs hard work, technique, good direction by you before starting the lesson.. But the audience should see none of this. They should see nothing other than the fully realized three-dimensional character right in the truth of the moment.
Acting technique is paramount to anyone wanting to be a superstar teacher.
The technique, however, will help you find yourself as a teacher. Children must believe what you say is real and that you're not reciting, spouting or commenting.
Great teaching, like great acting, is often in the eye of the beholder, but children almost always know when they are in the presence of something special. The performances that most often thrill us are those where instinct and technique are both in perfect balance but also opposition, and flamboyance and inner life collide head on, transforming feeling into thought and words.
You can teach people timing, you can teach them how to stand; you can give them the infrastructure that allows them to take risks, but you can't teach them to be in touch with their own spirit. All great teachers are, and it is what makes them distinctive. It's as if there is something coiled but restless inside them struggling to get out. When it does, the class ignites.
There is always someone who can step on stage and steal the whole show. They are such a good actor/actress that
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they pull you into their world and leave you on the edge of your seat. Keep reading to find out how to be a superstar teacher and show strong emotions that will captivate your students.
Don't be scared. Smile and look like you are having fun.
Be confident.
Keep trying and don't give up!
Express yourself. The main idea in being a superstar teacher is expressing emotion and what you're feeling. The audience needs to know what is happening and to feel about certain situations.
Learn to react.
While not everyone agrees that teaching is reacting, it is still an important thing to consider when you're learning about teaching. This means that you have to work on your responsiveness to any given teaching situation.
  •   Engage yourself in your character's world. React to circumstances and other characters of the children as your character would.
  •   Keep yourself in the moment. Don't try and start thinking ahead to the next lesson, or agonizing about whether you said your explanation appropriately in the previous lesson.Make your posture match your character as a superstar teacher. It's important to remember that something as small as an accurate posture for your role can make a big difference. Not only does it make you look more confident, but it will also make you feel more confident

because it will force you to stand tall, but don't arch your back too far.
Monitor your speed and volume. When presenting new lessons, it's tempting to blaze through them as fast as you can. Be careful not to over exaggerate, though. Slowing down too much will make you sound robotic and will bore your pupils. Think about how someone would actually deliver these words. Likewise, be sure to project your voice enough that you can be heard in the back of the class, but avoid yelling. Project instead.
Play with emphasis. Think about the subtext of every lesson, and emphasize accordingly. It may not sound important, but emphasis can have a huge role in anything
you say. I love you means something completely different than I love you.
Put yourself in the place of your students. You can not adequately represent the character of fantastic teachers unless you can get inside their head. Even though your words are scripted out, your actions and blocking aren't always written in stone. In addition, knowing your students well will help you improvise .
Never do the same as the teacher in the school did. Make YOUR character unique. Yes, in the school they did a good job with the role, but you do not want to copy.
Think before you speak, so you don't pull the whole "um" thing or stutter. That will bore the children and make them lose interest.
Make body movements! Jazz hands, thumbs up, a dramatic lean on your hip, roll your eyes, stick your tongue out, shuffle your feet, flip your hair, smile, stare,

anything works with your role, just try not to make it seem fake!
Be aware of things that you do when you're nervous. Avoid playing with your hair, hiding your hands in your sleeves, or shuffling your feet. Instead, deal with your nerves by taking a deep breath and drinking some water. Reassure yourself that you'll be fine.
Try to do actions someone would really do. For example, if you're sad, show it in your eyes, not only your mouth and your voice.
Make sure you're prepared!! Don't be nervous.
And you must be a Good Director in the classroom.
Which lesson? Organize the Participants and The Performance.
Being a director in the classroom isn't easy. Once you've finally found the opportunity to direct, you are strongly responsible for the final product. This may stress you out at times, but remember that the final goal is that the production is the best it can be.
Decide on what method you are going to use to present the new lesson.
As a director, you try to find a method that is best suited to convey what you want to say to the children. It is important that your way reflects how you feel about certain issues, either social, moral or ethical, and that the

children understand what you are trying to say. It is time to gather a cast from the children.
Organizing the Participants
Run auditions. You are now at the point where you have to choose who will be on your cast. This can be a difficult choice, either because you have too few good children or too many.
 When you hold auditions, be sure to keep a weather eye open for chemistry between certain children. You can benefit from casting them in roles that require them to be on stage together a lot both physically and verbally.
Organize rehearsals. Once you finally start rehearsing, it is important to first explain your rules and how you work to your cast. Be clear from the start that you have a certain method by which you work and that there are certain rules. Preferably, those rules are simple. For example: the students are not allowed to speak during concentration exercises. Though this may seem obvious, it may sometimes happen that you have an excitable group to work with. For such a group, keeping a tight ship could be beneficial. It also shows that you take your part in the production seriously, which gains you some extra respect.
 At the beginning of each new lesson, have your pupils do some concentration exercises. It will get them focused on the work that lies ahead of them.

Next to concentration exercises, vocal and physical exercises are also very useful as a warm-up.
Consider your approach to directing. For example, before each lesson, tell the pupils what you want to see them do. This will prevent an endless quest through various different approaches while you are trying to figure out which one you prefer. Of course, this is a style of directing that may not suit everyone.
At the end of the lesson, give general comments concerning blocking, missed lines or things proceeding too slow or too fast. Give each pupil individual comments after they have done a scene in the new lesson whether the lesson is about a play or a novel or mat or even science, possibly concerning their body language or the way they interact with the other pupils on stage. Once you've done that, give the children who are not in the scene a chance to speak their minds. They are your extra eyes and ears and they may spot something you have missed.
The Performance
A good director will be supportive and professional even at times of great stress.
Remain calm and in control. Even if things go wrong during the show, show the children around you that you have rock-solid faith in them. It will make them feel better and therefore work better. All will benefit from this.
Practice the bowing at the end the performance with your actors.
The audience will be your assistants and some of the pupils who did not participate.
After the Show
When a performance is over, congratulate everyone on a job well done. Compliment your actors, production crew and technicians on the good work they did. Either before or after you do this, talk to the audience to find out what they thought. After all, they are the people you are communicating with. They can provide you with insights that you had not thought of and that will enrich the next performance.
Pass on constructive feedback. When advice given to you from your audience is worthwhile, tell your team about it.
Teach like a director and use Drama in teaching

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