21st Century Educator Skills, For A Better Teacher & Students Education

Teaching is a noble profession and a teacher in the education system is like an umbrella in the rain. If you got the skilled quality teacher, you have the most electrifying, engaging and productive classroom. But if not, then you need some supplement to make that look better otherwise that will impact end user mood and health and in today's era end user's health is really going down because you just can't replace teacher with anyone else as everyday we're seeing a dramatic transformation in education and classroom whether its content, or infrastructure but why there's no increase in manpower skills? Is anybody investing in this area? Who is responsible admin or teacher herself? Some reforms are really required in this matter, being a 21st century learner and a community manager of a growing EdTech Community i interacted with many teachers and administrators in few past weeks around the world both online and offline and there's huge difference in teachers around the world and in my journey many teachers inspired me a lot and after researching, interacting about 21st century education, you can't let go role of teachers because a teacher knows how to tackle a bunch of high energetic kids and only she can incorporate skills in students that we required in this century i.e. mainly 4Cs (Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, Critical thinking). So a teacher should be skilled in a way that she can use curriculum, technology and teach those important 21st century skills to students. So that students don't feel exhausted and they believe in what the teacher is teaching and enjoy working, learning together with peers, thinking hard on a topic and sharing their learning with the world. So what are the skills 21st century education demanding from a teacher so that she can easily transfer important skills to students by incorporating skills in her classroom environment and curriculum.

Cognitive

1. The Teacher should teach their students' how to adapt to different situations as this will help students to be independent and self-directed learner.
2. Teachers should help their students develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills by giving them projects on real life practices and showing them case studies of great work done by different peoples in different areas of life's. For example, as a teacher, you can tell them how fireman works in tough situations.
3. Teachers should make their students a good listener because most of the times students feel they know everything, then they stop listening and finally loosing grip on a important discussion or a lecture.
4. Teachers should give authority to students to conduct activities in school or after school so that they learn how to step ahead of old practices and show their innovation and creativity and through this they will understand their strengths and how good they can think and afterwards you as a teacher can set an example of that students in front of others to motivate them.

Interpersonal

1. Teachers should conduct activities like plays, debate, group discussions which allow students to develop their negotiation, reasoning and arguments strong by thinking in real time while analyzing the situation.
2. Teacher should teach the importance of digital citizenship how to behave online with your seniors and fellow peers. What to share in front of others as it impacts others perspective and thinking style for that particular individual, situation or thing.
3. Teachers should teach their students the role of PLN (Personalized Learning Network) and how to utilize it as it impact a lot of students thinking both online and offline.
4. Teachers should help students work in a team to learn more collaboration, teamwork and leadership skills and for this teacher can demonstrate an example of famous games like cricket or football how captain lead his side by collaborating with his teammates and make strategies in real time and win the match.

Intrapersonal

1. Teachers should develop an environment for students which is appealing, restful, possess comfort and flexibility to students and also where they can feel motivated and learn themselves in the absence of teacher or at home.
2. Teacher should give proper feedback's to students in their projects and exams as they invest lots of time in such activities and they always want to improve their previous mistakes.
3. Teachers should cater each student according to their own learning style and teach them with way they learn fast and for long.
4. Teachers should teach students how to be a life long learner and improve their personal growth.
5. Teaches need to take professional development seriously, which teach them how to understand students assessments and standard.
6. Teachers should support other educators in their role of facilitators of learning.
7. Teacher should appreciate students good performance in front of all and introduce them with their learning in private as it matter to students cognitive behavior.

Effective use of EdTech

1. Teachers should use technology to prepare content that is engaging and appropriate for their students learning levels.
2. Teachers should use different edtech trends to teach their students on a particular topic like if you want to teach communication and collaboration to students, then you can use educational-trends like game based learning through which you can conduct some drama's and skit which will allow students to gain more confidence in communication and they'll automatically collaborate with each other.
3. Teacher should teach students to become a better searcher as this skill will allow students to explore and see innovation already done on those particular topics and there are many educational search engines which allows students to search better and relevant to their search in easy method.
4. Teachers can use concepts like flipped classroom, game based learning, project based learning, to teach them more deep as school time is very short, so using technology teachers can engage students after school by sharing interesting content with them that can be in the form of multimedia like audio, videos, moocs, webinars, info-graphics, podcast etc.
5. Teachers can easily collaborate with parents and share insights regarding students performance and schedule and teachers can collaborate easily online with other classes to learn how they operate and learn.
6. Using technology, teachers can easily arrange content and other resources so that at the time of learning students can easily follow and reuse easily.
7. Teachers can use freely available digital tools to create quizzes, poll, surveys based on any particular concept, also teachers can create their own blog for their class and there teachers can curate information and share resources on any particular topic.
8. Using apps like paperly teachers can send weekly motivational thoughts, updates and tips for both students and parents.

Community Development

1. Teachers can create a community group for both students and parents on any social platform and then they can easily track students and contact parents.
2. Teachers can join our external communities of like-minded educators either subject specific or skills based where they can discuss and share practices already happening worldwide with each other .
3. Tell your practices to other teachers of your school community so that they can also share mindset and help you build an in house collaborative community.
4. Use your community to provide scheduled updates on professional development for your teachers and engage them in other professional development related activities.

No matter where you're teaching in a private, public school, no matter how many students you already taught, no matter you well you try, teaching is the only profession which helps students grow beyond imagination because we as a student blindly follows our teacher what she's teaching, how she's talking and such things matter a lot to kids as you, as a teacher, are world for them and they don't know how to explore world and things around them. So try these skills and give a thought how you can bring smiles on those innocent student;s faces who are totally dependent on you for their learning and education. You as a parent always want that teacher who's teaching your kid should know how to make them more learning friendly.

So please teach students how to think hard, respond politely, provide good respect and learn from society. Its not that tough many teachers not only in US, but across the globe are doing these activities either in groups or individually. We need to understand that for everybody's growth, we need to collaborate not compete.

"Its never to late"

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Author - Edupreneur, EdTech Researcher & Community Manager, 21st Century Education Enthusiast, Co-Founder EdTechReview.in, Researches in effective use of Technology use in Education. You can find me on here on linkedin or on twitter

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