TRAINING STUDENT TEACHERS

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Once a year students who are learning to become teachers have to come and do some practical at a school.

Before they come, I use to visit the University where my students came from, they knew me as I had taught there for a while, but still preferred the smaller children. They knew I was looking for the best students and never complained.

The reason being, that you can still teach small children something, and some of the bigger children thought that knew everything.

This was why I always loved the smaller children; you can still make them into wonderful people.

I asked the people at the University to send me the student that they thought would make the best teachers.  They also knew that I needed men who could help with sport and rugby.  So they always accommodated me and sent me at least 20 students.

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I made a point of making them feel like teachers, and daily went to visit one of them when they were doing their practical.

It is very important to make sure that they know how to give a lesson without being boring.

I just felt this was part of my job and always taped the lesson and afterwards sat in the office and played the lesson to them to make them hear what they sound like. If they found it boring, can you imagine how bad it was for children who were still learning?

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I am now thinking back about a funny story that our minister once told us when he was eating at our house.

He is such a wonderful preacher and you always remember exactly what he told you on Sunday.

He told us that they had to practice and there was one of the students that just went on and on repeating himself.  One of his professors stood up and said, you are like an aeroplane that wants to land, just before you land you start going up again and start over. Remember you have to land sometime without repeating yourself so many times.

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I always taped their lessen so that they could listen and ask questions.  This really helped them a lot.

This is what I was trying to teach the students. If you can make it interesting for the children, you will never have a problem with naughty children in your class and they will also remember what you were teaching them.

It is not always how long it takes it is about the way you explain.  After that you can ask if there is someone who does not understand yet.  If you find some do not, give the other children something to do and take the group and explain it in a different way to make them understand.

You might find that this will make life nicer for you as well as the class.

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The teachers loved having students and also helped them by teaching them how to handle a class.

I had wonderful teachers, except for two of them. Obviously I never gave them any students.

When it came to sport, they so often said it was always difficult but if you know how, it makes it so much easier to teach the children.

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These students learnt from my best teachers at the rugby and athletics.

There is nothing worse than sitting still listening to someone who does not know what he or she is doing, and that is the reason I always tried to help them become the best teachers.

I cannot even remember how many of them taught at my school after finishing with University, but believe me it was a lot.

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The evening before they left us we always had a big braai at the school,  for all the teachers and students, we all enjoyed it as these were such nice people.

I hope you enjoyed my story and may you all have a wonderful day here from the Wild Coast.