People’s Teacher of Belarus gave the finalists of the Teacher of the Year contest three valuable tips on how to become the winner

How to evaluate the work of a teacher in 15 minutes, why a smartphone is the “third hemisphere of the brain” and what does a school lesson have in common with the movement of planets? This was discussed at the opening of the final of the contest “Teacher of the Year of the Republic of Belarus – 2026” by the chairman of the jury, well-known teacher, people’s teacher of Belarus Valery Barashkov. And finally, he gave the participants three methodological tips on how to become a winner, reports sb.by.

- They say time will tell. And I will say otherwise: my soul will show. Such contests are always filled with emotions. To comprehend the work of the teacher in such a short time - a week, and in some episodes and 15 minutes - is extremely difficult. Especially since teachers really need to evaluate children. Adults evaluate differently from the height of their flight. So we will assess how the soul will tell.

To fashionable interactive forms and online platforms, the teacher, admittedly, is reserved:

- In my opinion, all these forms give a maximum of 8-10 percent. The main thing was and will be done by the teacher. Of course, these elements must be used, you will not get away from them. But any technical device, except for the good, carries very dangerous harm. In the first quarter, I sometimes tell kids to hand over the gadget — or hand over the “brain destroyer.” And in fact, this device can be called both a brain amplifier and the third hemisphere. In the hands of a good, educated person, any device is useful. In the hands of the bad, it is a weapon.

- Any event related to the communication of people is the path to development. You do not need to be locked up in your premises. The lesson closes the teacher in the classroom - you need to communicate outside the classroom, in hiking, in enterprises. When I was still working in a rural school and meeting with teachers from all over the republic, I was fascinated by the people around us. Meeting unusual people is the main advantage of such competitions.

- The teacher-lighter is the greatest joy for both colleagues and children. If there are a lot of lighter teachers in a school, it is a great school, children tend to go there more than home. But the lighter is not safe, so you need safety instructions.

The speaker gave three valuable advice to the contestants:

- Advice one: remove the negative. Our brains are designed to guide us 95 percent of the time, and only about an hour a day do we know what we are doing. The rest of the time we live on the machine. You can’t control the brain, you can fool it. Before the lesson and before the competitive test, you need to remove all the negativity that accumulates in your head: sick, the family is wrong, garbage information from the Internet was picked up. Your head should be fresh and clean.

- You need to make the body work differently than it used to. Good physical activity - and the brain switches from bad thoughts to muscles. But dumbbells in the tram or subway can not lift. Then we change the respiratory system. We usually take 12-20 breaths per minute. And if you do 3-4 - the body will perceive this as an alarm and throw all the forces on the absorption of oxygen. The principle is simple: four seconds inhale, four seconds delay, four seconds exhale, four seconds delay. Repeat 10 to 20 times. Like a vacuum cleaner, all the garbage comes out of your head. I tried and taught my students and thanked them. It is only important not to do it formally: concentrate, you can with your eyes closed, so that nothing interferes.

The second advice from an experienced teacher: Be yourself.

- Or, in other words, live in the stream, on the machine. When the headmaster, methodologist, checker comes to the lesson, the teacher is psychologically rebuilt - and the lesson is not as planned. This is the biggest mistake of an adult. We need to learn from children: they are controlled by everyone – at change, at home, by teachers, and they live their lives. So do you: imagine that the jury members are just older children.

Valery Vasilyevich recalled how 45 years ago, in a rural school, he explained to seventh-graders a complex topic – modulation and demodulation of signals on a transistor – in the presence of a high-ranking guest. And he got so carried away that he jumped up to the inspector with a question like a student, he laughs:

- There is an important nuance in this reception. When you are preparing for a competitive lesson, do not take new, specially invented techniques. You have hundreds of them. Take what you are doing on a subconscious level – it should be 80 percent. Then the brain works on an automaton, and it has the ability to think. And in the course of the lesson, he comes up with things that you yourself wonder: he did not think, but invented.

- Everything that surrounds us, and everything that we are made of, exists because of one physical phenomenon: resonance. The Earth resonates in the orbit of the Sun, the molecules from which proteins are composed resonate. In one cell, ten to the eleventh degree of chemical reactions occur unmistakably every second - this is how this complex system works. We hear and we see, these are resonances.

And imagine: you have “adult children” sitting in your classroom, you have prepared yourself, you are setting out – and the resonance is not taken into account. Failure is inevitable. Resonance is a coincidence of frequencies. And a person has more of these frequencies than the strings in a guitar: name, clothes, appearance, behavior, interests. If in your classes and open events you find these frequencies in children and jury members, success is inevitable. Teacher of the Year: 63 teachers will compete for the title of the best and the main prize – a car