My first teaching experience

I am a passionate public speaker and suddenly one day I thought of teaching people who are shy to talk in front of a crowd or even a small gathering to overcome the fear and give their best speech. I also believe that, teaching might be a good career option for me in the long run. With these two similarities, I came to a decision to teach a student through online classes how to overcome the fear, to improve on the skills that they have and also learn few more skills.

I already had a plan in the back of my mind about the flow of the classes, the portions that I have to cover but before I started teaching anyone I wanted know their current level, how they speak? are they nervous? and many other things. First, I made the student to deliver an introduction speech called “About me”. This gave a lot of inputs for me to understand how to proceed with the classes.

After understanding the student’s level and the comfort zone, I started with the basics “how not to be scared or shy while talking in front of an audience”. This is a problem with many kids who love to talk but, are scared that others will make fun of them if they say something wrong. This was the same problem with my student as well. I tried to explain that everyone, even great speakers make mistakes; it’s the process of learning to try and reduce the errors that you make in the speech. After that, I slowly started teaching the features of a speech which will enhance the overall quality of the speech.

During one of the sessions the student said “it was difficult to come up with a speech and memorize in a week due to lot of school homework’s” that’s when, I helped the student to understand how to make a timetable on a daily basis and writing down the to-do tasks list. I also told the student that, if you feel you won’t be able to get ready with the speech before a class, then let me know you want an extra week’s time to prepare there will be no harm in asking. The student found the timetable idea easier to follow on a daily basis for prioritizing the tasks and completing them on time. That’s when a teacher becomes a facilitator, rather than just continuing with classes wondering that it’s the student’s problem to do the homework’s.