QUALITIES OF A PROFESSIONAL TEACHER

QUALITIES OF A PROFESSIONAL TEACHER

All teachers should possess:

                  I. PROFESSIONAL ATTRIBUTES

              II. PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

           III. PROFESSIONAL SKILLS

PROFESSIONAL ATTRIBUTES

Relationships with children and young people

CC 1st                    Have high expectations of children and young people including a commitment to ensuring that they can achieve their full educational potential and to establishing fair, respectful, trusting, supportive and constructive relationships with them.

CC 2nd                Hold positive values and attitudes and adopt high standards of behaviour in their professional role.

Frameworks

CC 3rd                 Maintain an up-to-date knowledge and understanding of the professional duties of teachers and the statutory framework within which they work, and contribute to the development, implementation and evaluation of the policies and practice of their workplace, including those designed to promote equality of opportunity.

Communicating and working with others

CC 4th                   

a.     Communicate effectively with children, young people and colleagues.

b.    Communicate effectively with parents and carers, conveying timely and relevant information about attainment, objectives, progress and well-being.

c.      Recognise that communication is a two-way process and encourage parents and carers to participate in discussions about the progress, development and well-being of children and young people. Relationships with children and young people

CC 5th                  Recognise and respect the contributions that colleagues, parents and carers can make to the development and well-being of children and young people, and to raising their levels of attainment.

CC 6th                  Have a commitment to collaboration and co-operative working where appropriate. Communicating and working with others

Personal professional development

CC 7th                  Evaluate their performance and be committed to improving their practice through appropriate professional development.

CC 8th                  Have a creative and constructively critical approach towards innovation; being prepared to adapt their practice where benefits and improvements are identified.

CC 9th                   Act upon advice and feedback and be open to coaching and mentoring.

PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

Teaching and learning

CC 10th             Have a good, up-to-date working knowledge and understanding of a range of teaching, learning and behaviour management strategies and know how to use and adapt them, including how to personalise learning to provide opportunities for all learners to achieve their potential.

Assessment and monitoring

CC 11th             Know the assessment requirements and arrangements for the subjects/curriculum areas they teach, including those relating to public examinations and qualifications.

CC 12th             Know a range of approaches to assessment, including the importance of formative assessment.

CC 13th             Know how to use local and national statistical information to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching, to monitor the progress of those they teach and to raise levels of attainment

CC 14th             Know how to use reports and other sources of external information related to assessment in order to provide learners with accurate and constructive feedback on their strengths, weaknesses, attainment, progress and areas for development, including action plans for improvement.

Subjects and curriculum

CC 15th             Have a secure knowledge and understanding of their subjects/curriculum areas and related pedagogy including: the contribution that their subjects/ curriculum areas can make to cross-curricular learning; and recent relevant developments.

CC 16th             Know and understand the relevant statutory and non-statutory curricula and frameworks, including those provided through the National Strategies, for their subjects/curriculum areas and other relevant initiatives across the age and ability range they teach.

Literacy, numeracy and ICT

CC 17th             Know how to use skills in literacy, numeracy and ICT to support their teaching and wider professional activities.

Achievement and diversity

CC 18th             Understand how children and young people develop and how the progress, rate of development and well-being of learners are affected by a range of developmental, social, religious, ethnic, cultural and linguistic influences. S

CC 19th             Know how to make effective personalised provision for those they teach, including those for whom English is an additional language or who have special educational needs or disabilities, and how to take practical account of diversity and promote equality and inclusion in their teaching.

CC 20th             Understand the roles of colleagues such as those having specific responsibilities for learners with special educational needs, disabilities and other individual learning needs, and the contributions they can make to the learning, development and well-being of children and young people.

CC 21st               Know when to draw on the expertise of colleagues, such as those with responsibility for the safeguarding of children and young people and special educational needs and disabilities, and to refer to sources of information, advice and support from external agencies

Health and well-being

CC 22nd           Know the current legal requirements, national policies and guidance on the safeguarding and promotion of the well-being of children and young people.

CC 23rd            Know the local arrangements concerning the safeguarding of children and young people.

CC 24th             Know how to identify potential child abuse or neglect and follow safeguarding procedures.

CC 25th             Know how to identify and support children and young people whose progress, development or well-being is affected by changes or difficulties in their personal circumstances, and when to refer them to colleagues for specialist support.

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS

Planning

CC 26th             Plan for progression across the age and ability range they teach, designing effective learning sequences within lessons and across series of lessons informed by secure subject/curriculum knowledge.

CC 27th             Design opportunities for learners to develop their literacy, numeracy, ICT and thinking and learning skills appropriate within their phase and context.

CC 28th             Plan, set and assess homework, other out-of-class assignments and coursework for examinations, where appropriate, to sustain learners’ progress and to extend and consolidate their learning.

Teaching

CC 29th             Teach challenging, well-organised lessons and sequences of lessons across the age and ability range they teach in which they:

a.     use an appropriate range of teaching strategies and resources, including e-learning, which meet learners’ needs and take practical account of diversity and promote equality and inclusion

b.     build on the prior knowledge and attainment of those they teach in order that learners meet learning objectives and make sustained progress

c.      develop concepts and processes which enable learners to apply new knowledge, understanding and skills

d.     adapt their language to suit the learners they teach, introducing new ideas and concepts clearly, and using explanations, questions, discussions and plenaries effectively

e.      manage the learning of individuals, groups and whole classes effectively, modifying their teaching appropriately to suit the stage of the lesson and the needs of the learners.

CC 30th             Teach engaging and motivating lessons informed by well-grounded expectations of learners and designed to raise levels of attainment.

Assessing, monitoring and giving feedback

CC 31st               Make effective use of an appropriate range of observation, assessment, monitoring and recording strategies as a basis for setting challenging learning objectives and monitoring learners’ progress and levels of attainment.

CC 32nd           Provide learners, colleagues, parents and carers with timely, accurate and constructive feedback on learners’ attainment, progress and areas for development.

CC 33rd            Support and guide learners so that they can reflect on their learning, identify the progress they have made, set positive targets for improvement and become successful independent learners.

CC 34th             Use assessment as part of their teaching to diagnose learners’ needs, set realistic and challenging targets for improvement and plan future teaching.

Reviewing teaching and learning

CC 35th             Review the effectiveness of their teaching and its impact on learners’ progress, attainment and well-being, refining their approaches where necessary.

CC 36th             Review the impact of the feedback provided to learners and guide learners on how to improve their attainment.

Learning environment

CC 37th              

a.     Establish a purposeful and safe learning environment which complies with current legal requirements, national policies and guidance on the safeguarding and well-being of children and young people so that learners feel secure and sufficiently confident to make an active contribution to learning and to the school.

b.     Make use of the local arrangements concerning the safeguarding of children and young people.

c.      Identify and use opportunities to personalise and extend learning through out-of-school contexts where possible making links between in-school learning and learning in out-of-school contexts.

CC 38th              

a.     Manage learners’ behaviour constructively by establishing and maintaining a clear and positive framework for discipline, in line with the school’s behaviour policy.

b.    Use a range of behaviour management techniques and strategies, adapting them as necessary to promote the self-control and independence of learners.

CC 39th             Promote learners’ self-control, independence and cooperation through developing their social, emotional and behavioural skills.

Team working and collaboration

CC 40th              Work as a team member and identify opportunities for working with colleagues, managing their work where appropriate and sharing the development of effective practice with them.

CC 41st               Ensure that colleagues working with them are appropriately involved in supporting learning and understand the roles they are expected to fulfil.

unit 10.Why is Teaching the Most Important Profession

Why is Teaching the Most Important Profession

Teachers are our nation builders—the strength of every profession in our country grows out of the knowledge and skills that teachers help to instill in our children.

Teachers have the capacity to shape the minds and futures of many - and they do so at all kinds of critical life stages.

Kindergarten teachers introduce young minds to the wonder of learning - and to the basic tools of learning that students will use their entire lives.

Middle School teachers have the onerous challenge of instilling a passion for academics in large groups of teens and tweens, whose minds are so deeply focused on developmental issues and their idiosyncratic social worlds.

High school teachers are charged with teaching detailed intellectual content to large groups of “near adults” - whose worlds are often tumultuous on the inside and on the outside.

College professors are charged with inspiring young adults - teaching them the nuts-and-bolts of highly technical content areas while showing them how limitless their life possibilities are. And in combination, across an individual’s lifespan, it is an army of teachers who have ultimately shaped how that individual understands the world and his or her place in it.

Reasons Why Teaching Is The Best Job In The World

1. The potential to transform lives –A teacher helped a student in any number of ways, from academic to welfare and emotional learning,

2. It gives you the chance to be continuously creative – of course there are increasing levels of accountability in teaching, but teachers are allowed to be creative in every lesson. Teachers have so many opportunities to try new ideas, and indulge in iterative process to ensure the optimum learning environment is created.

3. It offers you a chance to continuously get better – teachers are not only encouraged to seek continuous professional development, but can ask for observation on a regular basis, to provide opportunities to grow and learn from masters or more experienced practitioners.

4. It is a grounding, humbling profession – the amount of work teachers do compared to remuneration is shockingly disproportionate, (paid vs non paid hours of work and secondly, in relation to other similarly creative and important (and not so important) vocations in our society).

5. There is always satisfaction somewhere –

On closer inspection, teaching demands are actually central to the job itself: explaining to parents where you are coming from; being observed; collaborating with others; marking teachers to feel satisfied.

6. It’s a chance to truly to lead the world in the 21st century – introducing students to new technologies and ways of presenting, curating, and collaborating with others with what they know is truly exciting and truly invigorating. Modern teachers are actually pioneering pedagogy, and can and will be able to hold their heads up high in the future when we look back and see how learning in this day and age took a radical but enormously beneficial turn for the better.

Engaging students in greater collaboration, and instilling initiative in curation and the promotion of information leads to truly independent learning, and setting up such learning environments is an opportunity that all teachers now have before them. There are few more gratifying feelings that being needed.

Conclusion

Of course, so much of the technological addition to teaching has all been achieved mostly through our own initiative, having to source and implement the enterprising learning strategies. But this only provides another string to our bow, and in the context of how important 21st century skills are, another example of why teaching is such an amazing thing to do. Sometimes teaching is exhausting, but friends, always come back to the core of what we are doing.