Teaching

Respectful Attitude

Even in classrooms of adult learners, there’s still an inherent imbalance of power that exists between students and teachers. It’s imperative for educators to be mindful of this imbalance and ensure that students feel respected and heard for the people they are and what they contribute to the classroom.

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Creativity goes hand in hand with adaptability — another key trait on this list. Whether you teach first graders or doctoral students, you’ll need the ability to innovate, think outside the box, and find novel solutions to challenges, which will empower you to meet a wider range of students’ needs. Being creative as an educator will also help you to foster creativity in your students — an essential skill they’ll need for countless career paths.

From department meetings to teaching dozens or hundreds of students every day, education is an intensely collaborative field by nature, involving a constant interplay between students, teachers, administrators, and family members. If your goal is to become an educator or transition into an educational leadership position, you’ll need strong collaborative skills to ensure you can work well with others consistently.

In line with being flexible and adaptable, it’s important to be prepared for a wide range of scenarios and challenges in the classroom. You can increase your overall level of preparedness as an educator by learning about your students’ strengths and challenges, and ensuring that you consider how each of your students could be affected by your lesson plans.

In 2006, psychologist Carol Dweck introduced the concept of “growth mindsets” vs. “fixed mindsets” in her book Mindset: The Psychology of Success. According to Dweck, individuals with a fixed mindset perceive assets like intelligence as being determined early in life, which can cause obstacles or challenges to seem insurmountable or overwhelming. In contrast to a fixed mindset, individuals who have a growth mindset believe that traits like intelligence and creativity can be developed with practice.

Your students will come to you from different backgrounds, skill sets, and challenges — and you need to be ready to meet them, whichever point they’ve reached in their learning. That means having the ability to accommodate students who learn at different paces, using different styles and methods, within the same classroom or group. This is another area where traits like adaptability, empathy, and patience come into play for educators.

Drawing on multiple subjects and disciplines shows students how businesses operate — and how problem-solving works — in the real world, grounding their learning in practical real-life scenarios.

The goal is to tune up weak skills, refine strong ones, or develop new abilities, a degree or credential program provides the perfect opportunity to acquire the qualifications and experience you need to go further in your chosen career path.