LEARNING+PROFESSION

Teachers continue to learn and grow as they provide access to learning for self and others. Teachers learn as they use past life experience to solve professional problems in the present and to imagine a better future. Teachers learn in collaboration with others. Outside of the classroom, teachers are always reading and everything they read is filtered through their teaching.
 * Teaching is a Learning Profession. **

No-one likes a know-it-all...

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...so don't be that guy.

Vulnerability and humiliation are very important attributes as a teacher. It is important to show to students that we do not know everything. By the same token, if we are wrong and a student calls us out, we need to accept that we are wrong and explain to the class that being wrong is not the end of the world.

Students will also realize that we are human when we explain our shortcomings. Of course it would not be a wise decision to start a lesson by exclaiming that, "This was really hard and I don't like this unit", but we do not see a reason why explaining that this unit is difficult for you would be ultimately detrimental. You could also discuss some things you struggle with in the syllabus at the beginning of the year. It really just adds a human face to us.

Remember that story about first-year-Mark having to abandon his progressive ideas in the face of regressive colleagues? Instead of fighting progress, let's embrace it and work with teachers. Someone somewhere said, "Surround yourself with people who you aspire to be like." So learn from teachers who have better ideas in the long run, even if they make you look bad in the short run.

There are many ways teachers can learn outside of the classroom as well. Whether it involves following news aggregation sources on tumblr, multiple news sources on twitter (and not just Fox and CNN use Al Jazeera, Guardian, BBC, etc.), or reading a new book a month. Whatever it is, we need to have a desire to learn.

A very important point too is that our students are younger than us. We understand GenerationMe/Millenial culture now, but what about the future generation we will be teaching? Culture changes, and we need to keep up with it.

That said I think that its also important that we as teachers not only learn about our content and current events that may affect our students lives but also what students are like outside of our classroom. Maybe this means attending a sporting event that they are involved with or a musical they have a part in. This not only shows that you care about your students but you could also use their extracurricular activities to engage them in the classroom.