Skills That One Needs In Teaching & Steemit

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Ever since I have started Steemit in September last year, it has become part of my daily routine. As much as teaching is my day job, Steemit has become as important as my lesson planning and daily teacher clerical work. It is easy to let teaching being the sole and only priority in life. However, I do love being on Steemit and so I have made it a point to post almost everyday throughout the week.

Like teaching however, Steemit can be as busy and requires as intensive a preparation as teaching. Teaching is a lot like stir frying. It takes a long time to prepare the ingredients, but to cook it will take as little as 5 minutes. Similarly, it will require the teacher to prepare activities and lesson planning before they can even teach. The same applies for Steemit, the amount of planning, drafting and writing can require time when it comes to preparing a post for Steemit. Thus, many of the skills that I have acquired through teaching can be applied in Steemit as well.

Time Management Skills

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It may be different in different parts of the world, but most teachers would have classes for most of the day, everyday of the week. Clerical work and lesson planning is left for after school hours or even during the weekend. The same goes with Steemit. If you truly make it a point to write one post everyday, its going to take some effort, especially with the different commitments one may have with life.

As a teacher, I normally would manage my time by preparing a lot of my lessons in advance. I would prepare during semester breaks as well as exam seasons when there are no classes. The same can be applied on Steemit. Imagine waiting in line for a burger or for the bus, you could easily plan for a few articles that you plan to write in the future. Trust me, this would really help on days when you either don't have enough time or when you run out of ideas.

As such, time management on both Steemit and teaching requires two things, a mobile workplace and wisdom to know when you can be working instead of staring at cars while waiting for the bus. I love putting my work on the cloud, especially on Google drive. Since my work is there, I could edit my lesson plans while waiting for a long meeting to be over or write my Steemit articles. Everything is synced to the cloud and I wouldn't have to bring my laptop around to get my work done.

In terms of wisdom, well, all you have to do is to be aware when you are idle. If you are not doing anything at all but you can spare a few minutes to do some quick editing to your work, you should do it.

Skills in Engaging Your Audience

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Not all of us get the opportunity to teach really fun and cool subjects, some subjects are just really, really boring. One of these subjects is on exams and assessment. I remember that my class would try their very best to stay awake as it is not as fun a subject as literature or classroom management. Thus, I would have to think of different activities and strategies to make the class fun.

The same applies to Steemit. It can be difficult to catch the attention of readers unless you have a really catchy title or topic. It is even harder to hold the readers' attention as they read through your post. Thus, it is important to make sure that what is written must be fun and exciting. The thing is, teaching, just like Steemit is very much a two way straight, you can't just have a great lesson or a great article and hope that students would be engaged. As such, it is important to talk to your audience and get a sense of what is working and what is not.

What I have learnt from teaching is that the best engagement comes from personally engaging your audience one at a time. I learn a lot of what works and what does not in the class through talking to some of my students casually, either on the way to class or as they are sitting at the cafeteria. The same goes for Steemit, I think most are rather reluctant to point out the flaws in your article unless you ask them personally to help you better improve your post. Thus, try to engage your students or your audience personally. It would be difficult and tedious, but you will learn a lot of your strengths and weaknesses.

Being Shameless

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I think it is very important to be shameless in the posts and lessons we do. I came to class in a clown costume once. It was a lot of fun but quite embarrassing as well. The point of it was to create buzz, engagement and fun in the classroom. Of course, I was told to be serious and not to dress up as a clown, but I would do it again if I had the chance.

How this applies to Steemit is tied to how creative you want to get. Often, many would doubt if a post written by themselves is good enough or acceptable enough for the masses. I would say be as creative as you can be. I think we are at our best when we let our creativity run wild even if it can embarrassing. Thus, be shameless!

How I get around the fear of being laughed at by others is by holding true to my goals. If my goal is to please others then sure, I would write the safest posts and do the most conventional lessons I can think of. But if I am thinking of challenging myself and hopefully bring some smiles to the lives of others, then I am shameless and I don't mind a little bit of embarrassment. I hope you have enjoyed this post. Do let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

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