Hi All,

I've recently gained my NLP Master Practitioner and Hypnotherapist certification

I've spent the past decade living and working in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, though am from NZ originally. My main areas of work in the past have been in Human Resources and Teaching (English in Thailand and science in Tanzania).

I believe young people are the way of the future and that teachers can play an incredibly important role in helping shape their students' aspirations and futures. I also believe teachers take up this profession due to their passion and desire to contribute and see young people succeed.

My concern is that teachers are taught what to teach but often lack sufficient skills and support in learning how to most effectively teach. I believe NLP has a lot to offer in this arena of creating the most positive learning environment possible for our young people. I also believe by enhancing the teachers' skills in this way they will find their career more rewarding on a long term basis and return home more fulfilled rather than frustrated at the end of each day. This will help keep our great teachers in the system longer, to the benefit of all.

On that basis, I'd love to connect with anyone who has a teaching background (or interest) and is willing to offer ideas, support, suggestions or references for me to follow-up as I pursue this avenue further.

Many thanks in advance for your help and I look forward to some interesting discussions in future.
Best wishes,
Sherryn

Welcome Sherryn!

Richard Churches and Roger Terry are the experts at using NLP in the classroom - check out their book: NLP for Teachers.

Several teachers post here too - hopefully you'll make some new connections very soon!

Hi Sherrin if all goes to plan I will be teaching in September for a year. I am pantswettingly excited by the prospect of integrating every piece of knowledge and skill that I have from NLP. I'll be teaching Psychology and every single thing that I/class does will be an example of whatever it is that they are learning. I will be delivering the process of learning and the process of Psychology are my ultimate aims for that year. What were you looking to do in terms of NLP and teaching?

Hi Sherryn,

This comment stood out for me

My concern is that teachers are taught what to teach but often lack sufficient skills and support in learning how to most effectively teach.My concern is that teachers are taught what to teach but often lack sufficient skills and support in learning how to most effectively teach.

I am not sure how things work where you are but here in the UK it is assumed that you know much of the subject knowledge before you get to study to become a teacher (Degree and then PGCE). The only alternative to this is when you study the subject knowledge at degree level which is combined into your teaching qualification and lasts for 4 year (BEd).

While there are many wrong was to teach there is no one right way and delivering your preferred way of teaching may not work for me and I am sure that works both ways.

I also believe teachers take up this profession due to their passion and desire to contribute and see young people succeed.

Spot on, however, I believe that good teachers leave the profession due to the pressures from the top of the line management tree rather than pressures from the children, even our extracurricular clubs have targets and crazy volumes of paperwork and the sad thing is that on a day to day basis the average teacher can get away with being an appalling classroom practitioner so long as they can complete spreadsheets of scores and pull a good lesson out of the bag once a year.

I currently mentor a newly qualified teacher and they spend more time cross referencing government white papers with those of the many quango groups (please be the GTC to be cut next) endless targets. Sense of fun, love of children or ability to create a wonderful learning environment does not get on the list of tick boxes.

My concern is that teachers are taught what to teach but often lack sufficient skills and support in learning how to most effectively teach.

When in the coal face you do not need to know the philosophy of drilling nor have the authority to change the drilling technique, here is a drill and a shovel, make your stats look good or get out.

Hi Sherryn, best wishes for "pursuing this avenue further". I think teaching is immensely rewarding and I like the fact that Matt mentions a "sense of fun" in his post (albeit as missing from tick boxes) but I think he's spot on about its importance. Certainly there is in secondary schools in the UK a tremendous focus on grades. There is a percentage of children who aren't happy at school and some I think are just bored. Bored of coursework and exams and being taught stuff they already know or they learnt in a second on the internet. I like Richard Bandlers comment that teachers should take ritalin to keep up with the kids. But good luck, I love being a teacher...
best wishes,
Simon