Communication means imparting information or knowledge. When it comes to teaching it is the teachers who are distributing knowledge and information to students. It is very important for students to be able to keep up with what the teacher tries to communicate with the class.
But in a classroom things may go wrong, making the communication of teachers and students less effective. To be effective, teachers have to try to minimise these barriers to communication. As a teacher, you could do this in a number of ways – for example by building constructive assertiveness, by responding emphatically or, by solving problems or by talking to parents.
Constructive Assertiveness
Constructive assertiveness is used to avoid labelling students as being bad, rude, annoying, and so on. This communication skill is used to emphasise what the students already know they should be doing, when they might not be doing it.
First, to make them stop clearly state the problem that is occurring, such as – “it is not proper to throw papers at each other during class”.
Secondly, use nonverbal gestures such as making eye contact, completely facing the student, matching facial expressions to your tone during statements.
By doing all these make sure, you obtain appropriate behaviour and make students take responsibility for their behaviours.
Empathic Responding
This simply means you are allowing the students to communicate with you openly and letting them know that you are listening and actively processing what they are telling you. The students will notice that you ask for and respect their perspective, all the while managing to listen to their reasons. Once emphatic responding is established it helps to solve many other problems.
Problem Solving
There are three steps to follow when approaching a problem.
The first step is to identify the problem at hand and one way of doing this is to ask the students for their view toward what is happening.
The second step is to identify any and all solutions to the problem, and pick a solution to use again by asking them what they have to say about the solution you presented to them.
The final step, is to get commitment from the students either orally or written saying that they have agreed to stick to the agreement for a specific amount of time.
Talking with Parents
Here you should use all the above mentioned approaches used with students, such as constructive assertiveness, empathic responding, and problem solving. You should always make an attempt to show the parents how appreciative you are of their help and support. The ultimate goal of talking with parents is to focus on choices students are making and to encourage better decisions of students and parents.