Professional Learning for Busy Educators

The characteristics of a productive teaching environment are many and diverse. Some of them can be dependent on budgetary constraints and tech levels, while others can be specific to the kaleidoscope of world regions whose schools are working to build exceptional learners. At the end of the (school) day, though, there are those characteristics that translate across cultures and conditions and break boundaries to become global standards of excellence for each classroom.

Such is the list compiled by the staff of TeachThought in the article 20 Observable Characteristics Of Effective Teaching. So what are the characteristics of effective teaching, and what does the universal idea of a truly productive teaching environment look like? We share our take on the 20 points from their article below in the hopes that you can use them to reflect and improve on your own teaching craft.

What are the kind of things a 21st century teacher needs to know and be able to do? What about 21st century students? What education technology works, and what is a waste of time? What would a checklist for 21st century teaching look like?

Does “21st century teaching” even make sense to use as a phrase anymore? If not, do we just say “teaching”? Does that fit our needs to innovate our collective profession to meet a modern circumstance?

These are among the questions today’s teachers have to face daily–in the classroom, mass media, professional development, and more. These conversations can get complex, opinionated, stuffed with rhetoric, and downright overwhelming at times. In response, Sylvia Duckworth has made consistent contributions to this conversation by creating colorful illustrations that communicate many of these ideas in easy-to-skim, easy-on-the-eyes, tempting to pin and share graphics.