What makes a good educator

We do not expect our students to be fully formed practitioners when they first enter their own classrooms, but we do expect them to be highly competent new teachers who:

• Create a safe learning environment
• Build a sense of community in their classrooms and among their colleagues
• Foster engaged and meaningful student thinking
• Create an environment of inquiry and questioning
• Demonstrate profound respect for and willingness to learn from their students, families and communities
• Draw on their students’ experiences as a source of the content from which they teach
• Operate out of a clear understanding of the context in which their work is situated
• Reflect deeply on their work as teachers and use that reflection as a basis for modifying and improving their practice
• Possess a well-developed sense of personal and professional identity
• Demonstrate deep content knowledge in their subject areas and the ability to turn that knowledge into exciting and engaging learning opportunities for their students
• Address issues of power, privilege and empowerment and the ways in which these issues affect the lives of their students
• Question mandates they are expected to follow that are counter to the interests and needs of their students
• Assess students’ strengths and needs in multiple and non-reductive ways
• Offer students’ choices which help position themselves as active learners.

Serve as advocates for their students within and outside the schoolhouse walls, including challenging the poverty and racism which threaten to undo much of their courageous work.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/08/we-must-push-back-against-the-misguided-and-dangerous-belief-that-a-new-generation-of-teachers-can-emerge-spontaneously/