Being an educator is so much more than just teaching the students.
The relationship of a student and teacher is way more than just exchange of knowledge and getting an education. Great teachers always work on building trusting relationships with students as they create a safe, positive and productive learning environment. The environment an effective educator create for the students helps the students to take ownership of their learning and come out even more sound beings. There are certain qualities that you’ll find in these educators that make them as awesome as they are!
The following pointers highlight some of the key characteristics that you’ll find in every effective and awesome educator:
Learn From Their Students:
Educators confirm that if they know who their students are, how they learn and how they think, they can better differentiate for those students’ needs. Effective educators dive deep so that they have a better understanding of their students on a personal level. They know what motivates them. And, perhaps most importantly, they understand how each individual student learns and thinks. Effective Educators are constantly using questioning of their students. Not to see what the student knows but how they know what they know. What processes are their students using to develop their understanding and how can that be used going forward.
Challenges Students:
It’s proven that students, even those that may be struggling, rise to the occasion when challenged. For that matter, we all have experienced that in our lives. When everything we do is easy we become bored and might even become disengaged. When everything is too hard we are resolved to the fact that we can’t do it so why even try. In order to avoid being either too easy or too hard, Effective Educators, understanding who their students are, provide differentiated instruction that challenges and pushes their students to go further with their learning.
Understand The Importance of Feedback:
Constant evaluation and improvisation is what makes a classroom learning environment healthy and engaging. Feedback plays an important role that helps the educator to improvise and come up with better solutions that can help the students as well as makes them better at their job. They not only seek feedback from their students but also from their colleagues to work on themselves and their art. They also look inward at their own practices, thinking about where they are in their teaching and where they want to improve. Effective Educators seek out feedback from their colleagues. They invite them in to evaluate their teaching and are eager to hear where they can improve.
Also read: Real-time Formative Assessment without the Need for Student Devices, Formative Assessment Techniques in a 21st Century Classroom
Continuous Professional Development:
Effective educators embrace the idea of lifelong learning and work in sync with it. This is something that they not only adore, but always try to instill this among their students as well; so that they can inculcate the importance of continuous learning among their students. It is the mantra they live by. Be it online courses or workshops or twitter chats to push against the conventional ways of teaching, they are always on a lookout to participate and learn new things from the community to perfect their art.
Practice Their Teaching As Art as Well as Science:
Effective Educators are not easily satisfied with where they are in their practice and are constantly seeking to figure out the best ways to teach so that their students learn in the best way possible. They might experiment with various, evidence-based instructional practices. However, the ones that work are the ones that work for everyone. Or maybe they aren’t. What matters is that they know as time goes by and methodologies change, they are not inflexible. Rather they know there is still much to learn and that each day is an opportunity to practice, fail, examine, reflect and try again.
What other characteristics have you observed in the educators who stand out?
Share with us in the comment section below.
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