Putting the Human Centre Stage

Putting the Human Centre Stage addresses the hidden skills within a teacher's repertoire. It focuses on a teacher's interpersonal skills, classroom presence, classroom atmosphere and group dynamics, teacher's voice, non-verbal communication, the general affective aspects of teaching, motivation, rapport, teacher's energy and motivation, improvisation, and preparing for the unexpected. Putting the Human Centre Stage will prompt you to reflect on your approach and encourage you to build a positive classroom community to enrich your teaching.

There is support for the knowledge and skills-based approaches that currently exist. However, in the first part of this book, Mark Almond covers the theoretical underpinnings of this book. Drawing on research, he critically argues that there needs to be more of a focus on being a teacher rather than the what or how, before discussing a practical emphasis on hidden skills which many teachers and trainers deem unteachable. He demonstrates that they are teachable, backing this assertion up again with theory and research.

In the second part of this book, the theory is put into practice. This section is full of exercises, activities and lesson ideas in a recipe format. These will help you to develop or improve teacher presence and classroom rapport, and build a positive classroom community. These activities can be done individually by teachers or used by teacher trainers in a classroom training situation.
Read more