Preschool educators often require stronger psychological skills and patience to teach children because children are not fully developed mentally. It takes time to spend with children and apply different teaching methods to teach them well. For children, preschool teachers are the first adults they interact with outside of their families.
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Children are like a blank sheet of paper that teachers must nurture with love to ensure that children learn and grow in a healthy environment and help them be exposed to the outside world. That’s why preschool educators have a great responsibility. Despite imparting knowledge, it is also important to shape children’s good character.
So what qualities should a preschool educator have if he or she wants to be a good preschool educator? Which qualities are the most important? We will mention eight qualities and abilities preschool educators should have in this article.
Quality of Preschool Educators 1: Communication Skills
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Preschool educators need to communicate with children to make sure they understand what the teacher is explaining in class and guide students to ask questions if they encounter problems. In addition, preschool educators need to communicate with parents to keep them informed about their children’s learning progress to better guide their children at home and understand their children’s learning needs.
Preschool educators also need to arrange curriculum with other colleagues, communicate and work together, share each other’s teaching tips, etc. Therefore, they must have excellent communication skills for students to receive a quality education.
Quality of Preschool Educators 2: Positive And Optimistic Mindset
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Preschool educators are expected to have a positive and optimistic work mindset and remain childlike when teaching children. As teachers are most often in contact with children who have no social experience, they need to understand their behaviour and remain childlike so as not to kill their imagination. For example, if a child paints the moon blue or draws a home in the sky, the teacher does not need to correct the child but rather should encourage the child to continue to complete his or her drawing.
Children need to have a wide enough imagination not to be prematurely restricted in their thinking. Teachers also need to be loving to children who are brutal in their behaviour, treat all students equally, and avoid bias that could harm a child’s young mind.
Quality of Preschool Educators 3: Patience
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Children are curious and excited about things around them because they are in an unknown state, so they are prone to be impulsive and make mistakes. Therefore, preschool educators need to be patient in guiding children and giving them the opportunity and space to correct their mistakes. Each child has different personalities, interests, preferences, and needs. Children’s behaviour will not always meet the teacher’s expectations, so teachers need to be more tolerant and patient, or they will easily become frustrated and confused in the teaching profession.
Some children are weak learners and need to be explained several times before they can understand what they are learning. A patient teacher will understand the differences in students’ abilities and allow them to progress at a pace that is appropriate for them to reach their learning goals. Children can also be more relaxed, not feel pressured to learn, and are more likely to enjoy learning, so patience is essential for preschool educators.
Quality of Preschool Educators 4: Responsibility
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Most children are new to the preschool and feel unfamiliar with things around them, so teachers must take responsibility for caring for children, ensuring that children stay within safe limits, paying attention to children’s behaviour and actions, avoiding children running out of the room during class, or acting in a way that violates the rules. It is their responsibility as teachers to pay attention to the safety and security of children.
Teachers need to create a safe learning environment, have good policies, and ensure that children follow the safety guidelines that put children’s safety first. A responsible preschool teacher needs to protect children and take responsibility for their behaviour so that parents will trust the teacher and feel confident leaving their child with the preschool.
Quality of Preschool Educators 5: Being Knowledgeable As Preschool Educators
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Preschool educators need to understand the subjects they teach and know how to impart this knowledge to children so that they can more easily absorb the different knowledge and enhance their cognition. Furthermore, sometimes explaining through books is tedious and difficult for children to understand because they do not have enough life experience.
Hence, teachers need to know how to teach creatively so that children can apply what they have learned to their lives and have a proper understanding of things. For example, teachers can use different games to help children master the knowledge to develop children’s independent thinking skills, which will be very helpful for children’s growth.
Quality of Preschool Educators 6: Passion
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If you become a preschool educator just to earn a paycheck, it is hard to stick with the profession because teaching children is not only a job, it requires passion and responsibility to do well. Preschool educators should be passionate about what they do and interested in teaching children and finding new ways to help children learn and grow.
Of course, there will be times when people are tired and bored with their jobs, which is why enthusiasm is so important because it encourages people to grow through job exhaustion and stress. If preschool educators don’t love their jobs, they will find it challenging in the long run.
Quality of Preschool Educators 7: Organizational Skills
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Preschool teachers need to have a strong ability to organize educational activities. When organizing lessons and designing educational activities, they need to prioritize learning in an organized manner according to the characteristics of young children’s minds and reduce clutter.
Teachers can also follow up on students’ learning progress regularly, which encourages minimizing the workload and having more time to focus on the children. So planning and organizing the work can help teachers handle multiple tasks, cope with the various needs of children, and allow the work to proceed smoothly.
Quality of Preschool Educators 8: Sociable
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Preschool work requires spending all day with people, so an outgoing, social personality can help teachers cope better with their day-to-day work and make it easier to build rapport and communicate with children’s parents. An outgoing personality also helps teachers feel energized after a long day with children because they enjoy being around people rather than being forced to.
A teacher’s outgoing personality can also help children do better in classroom activities, play and learn with them. Instead of not wanting to go to school because they fear the teacher, children will look forward to going to preschool more.
Conclusion
Preschool educators are a respected profession and a role model for every child to learn from. Therefore, as a preschool teacher, the teacher should pay attention to their words and actions, care for each child, help the child integrate into the group, and lead the child to grow. These are the qualities we believe a good preschool educator must have. We hope that every educator can better develop their professional abilities to help every child learn and grow healthy and happy.
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