Content area
Full Text
A teacher takes a hand, opens the mind, and touches the heart." Obviously, teachers' approach to teaching and their instructional decisions depend on their personal principles which function like rules for best behavior, or maxims, by which they could be guided throughout their career as a teacher (Richards, 1996). As any experienced teacher might well remember, at the beginning stages of his or her career, he or she may have been influenced by vague feelings of intimidation or desperation. Obviously, the more self-confident a new teacher feels, the less he or she would be overwhelmed by such initial feelings of fear or despair. Apparently, new teachers are in need of some general guidelines or maxims to boost their self-confidence so that they can function more confidently in dealing with different types of circumstances that might arise in the classroom. Such maxims are actually gentle cautions and words of counsel that are based on the general notions held about good teaching by highly experienced teachers. Obviously, being familiar with such rules of thumb can enhance the new teachers' efficiency in the classroom. Surprisingly, little has been written on helping new teachers both face and overcome their hidden feelings of anxiety and uncertainty at the very beginning stages of their career. In short, the current study was an attempt on the part of the researcher to make a thorough review of the literature in order to identify the features that most effective teachers generally seem to have in common as well as the most practical maxims that can be recommended to the new teachers so that they can overcome their feelings of uncertainty and anxiety at the initial stages of their career as a teacher. The researcher hopes that this study could provide the new teachers with practical suggestions so that they could become professionally more efficient and personally more self-confident in a profession claimed to have an impact even upon "eternity" let alone upon the lives of the students living on the Planet Earth!
Keywords: Maxims, Confidence, Efficiency, Teaching instinct.
Introduction
Over the years, many new teachers have questioned their own abilities while raising the question: "Are great teachers born or made?" Melissa Kelly believes that to become a great teacher, any individual needs to...