Instructional Skills: The secret to engaging students?

An excerpt from the Beyond Monet website:

"If you observe experienced and effective teachers throughout an academic year, you will see them applying an extensive repertoire of instructional skills. However, in most cases, you will not hear teachers specifically identify or even discuss those skills when reflecting on their teaching.

Instructional skills refer to simpler teacher behaviors that are usually not driven by a predetermined process or a theory. They do not provide theory specific results. In terms of student learning, instructional skills are more like sandpaper, whereas, strategies are like table-saws. If you want to make a bigger difference in student learning -- use strategies. That said, in carpentry, remember that you need both for a finished product. Do you need both skills and strategies in education? From our experience and our experiences with other teachers, applying the strategies without the accompanying skills reduces the effectiveness of the strategies." -Chapter Three, Component Two: Instructional Skills

This makes me think back to last year when I was applying for teacher's college. Trying to figure out and develop what I wanted to say in my personal statements and interviews forced me to take a closer look at what exactly I had to offer to the field of Education.

Now after a short but eventful summer job, I've realized that there are so many skill sets that are inferred when being an effective teacher. Teaching requires more than the standard list of skills like organization, class management, communication skills. Even though those skills are important and they are things I think I possess ...there are also a number of things that most people don't even realize they're doing to make them a better person/ employer/ student/ teacher.

Good body language, smiling, enthusiasm, warmth, humour, instincts, flexibility and some semblance of intuition for what seems to be working and not working for your group of students are all very important and useful traits to have. These things can't really be taught by anyone but they can be created and developed if you have practical experience. So far this book has been helping me become more aware of the traits that I didn't even realize I possessed and also those that I wish to attain as I gain more classroom experience. I think by becoming more aware of these little things, it makes for a more engaging. fun and interactive lesson for both the student and the teacher.