Do you work for a daycare center you want to become a good daycare teacher? If YES, here are tips to help you be an outstanding teacher. A daycare teacher’s job involves more than just watching kids every day. Coupled with making sure those children are safe, a daycare teacher is tasked with their health, development, nutrition, and education.
Put together those responsibilities with the ever-changing personalities of multiple infants, toddlers, and preschoolers on a daily basis, a daycare teacher needs a lot of positive qualities to be successful. Good daycare teachers do not enter the job without any training.
These teachers must have taken courses in child development and understand the milestones and skills children should learn at each age. Through classes and training, these teachers understand how to plan appropriate activities and strategies to help children meet those milestones.
Have it in mind that children prefer to mimic the actions of the adults around them. A good daycare teacher understands this and serves as a positive role model for the children in her care. This involves dressing comfortably to make it easy to interact with the children and avoiding revealing clothing or shirts with negative images.
It also includes avoiding inappropriate behaviors, such as smoking, hitting, pushing, or using putdowns and other foul languages. A good daycare teacher loves working with children. These teachers are kind to all children and do not discriminate against children irrespective of race or ability.
Patience is exhibited all through the day as children throw tantrums, make messes and exert extreme amounts of energy. Even when it is daunting, challenging or children do not cooperate, quality daycare teachers are focused on the best interests of the children in their care and are dedicated to helping them learn and grow.
10 Smart Tips to Be a Good Daycare Teacher
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Be Prepared And Organized
Note that this entails having materials ready for the whole group and small group activities as well as for centers. It also entails being ready for mishaps like spills, accidents, and runny noses. It entails keeping sanitation and safety in mind: washing your hands and theirs on arrival and throughout the day; cleaning and sanitizing tables for meals; having tissues and gloves handy; locking up poisons and anything that says to keep out of reach of children.
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Reflect
Engaging in self-reflection always leads to improvement. After you try something, ask yourself, “What worked about this? What didn’t? Why? What could I do differently?” Don’t worry if something doesn’t initially work the way you had planned. Learning by doing is very effective, and when you reflect you allow yourself the opportunity to improve.
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Be Patient
Have it in mind that it takes time to settle into a new program or school. Allow yourself time to adjust to your surroundings and the colleagues, children, and parents you will come to interact with on a daily basis.
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Address Cultural Or Special Needs
Early childhood teachers are expected to address cultural or special needs of the children they teach. For instance, if a child has a food allergy, the teacher is expected to be aware of the content of the food the child is offered or is eating. Furthermore, if a child belongs to a culture or religion that doesn’t allow her to celebrate certain holidays, the teacher must respect the child’s background and arrange for an alternative activity for the child.
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Create A Regular Routine And Schedule
Remember to keep whole group gatherings short. Also, don’t forget that children have varied attention spans and learn through play and active engagement. Read every day. Limit transitions. Balance active and quiet times as well as child initiated and adult facilitated time.
Classroom management is more or less an issue for new teachers. Many discipline situations can be corrected by examining your schedule and environment to prevent problems before they occur. Although it is necessary to have a consistent routine, it is also imperative to be flexible. If children aren’t interested or acting up, then change plans.
Establish a partnership with your assistant. She or he can make your job easier or more difficult. Discuss your role and theirs as well as expectations for each part of the schedule at the start of the year. Address problems when they are small and don’t save them inside and grumble.
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Experiment
Young children explore and experiment, and so should you. Don’t be scared to try out new ideas you may have. As you get to know the children, your planning for activities and interest areas will change. Go with it, and always ask yourself, “Developmentally, is this appropriate?
What do I want to accomplish by planning/implementing this?” Be careful when choosing the ideal materials and manipulatives you provide for the children. Don’t forget that these materials should always be: working and useable, related to your study and purpose of play, purposefully implemented to help children reach goals and objectives.
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Get To Know Every Child As A Unique Individual
Have it in mind that every child is different and special. The ideal way to teach children is to first understand them. Children need to know that you respect and value them, which are the message they get when you take the time to talk with them, observe them, and learn about them as people.
Also, take your time to find out what makes each child tick. What are their interests, temperaments, and learning styles? What motivates them? How do they learn best? What skills and talents do they have? What are their challenges? What special circumstances are there that affect them? Note that with this knowledge you can teach children in a way that capitalizes on their strengths and builds their confidence and competence.
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Keep Your Sense Of Humour Close By
Indeed teaching is a serious job; there’s probably nothing more important. But it is also a fun job. You want to never lose sight of the joy of being with young children. When a child does something humorous, share his delight. Note that laughing over funny rhymes makes phonemic awareness both more fun and impressionable.
Also, celebrating the humor in a storybook like Agatha’s Feather Bed: Not Just Another Wild Goose Story (Carmen Agra Deedy) or a song like “I Know an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly”, makes the experience more memorable! It is easy to obsess over problems and worry about things you wish you’d done differently. Humour, though, brings much-needed perspective. If you can maintain your humor, you’ll be a much happier teacher—and most likely, a better one too.
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Be Yourself
Just as every child has his/her own personality, so do educators. As you become familiar with how each child learns and experiments let each child become familiar with you. Also, take your time to let them know who you are as well. The platform to build positive relationships will benefit children socially and emotionally. Serve as a model for the relationships you’d like them to build with each other.
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Become A Keen And Regular Observer
Observation is more or less a teacher’s best tool. Learn how to be an objective observer right from the start. Note that by taking a factual look at what children do and say, you build relationships. You understand what children are capable of doing developmentally, how they approach solving problems, how they spend their time, how they interact with others, and what they are learning.
In addition, for teachers, observation serves a number of vital purposes, including being able to keep track of all your children’s growth and development, deciding whether to change or modify the environment and determining if your curriculum needs to be altered to better serve children. The better observer you are, the more skilled you will become as a teacher.
Good teachers are first friends, then educators. Remember to take the time to get to know your students and then adjust your teaching style and methods to meet their individual needs.