The Effective and Efficient Educator

The Effective and Efficient Educator

The classroom teacher’s role has changed dramatically from its twentiethcentury foundations. Historically, students did not have access to all the information they could ever want at their fingertips. Now they do. Before the internet, teachers were viewed as a source of knowledge. When students had a question, they did not have many other sources outside of the school or public library from which to get answers and turned to their teachers.

In an internet-connected world, there is more knowledge readily available than any one teacher could ever know. Students now go online to search for answers instead of going to their teacher. However, technology has not replaced and, I believe, never will fully replace the teacher. Teachers are uniquely placed to support students in developing the critical thinking skills necessary to determine valid and reliable information found online from the unreliable and invalid. In addition, students need a trusted adult to go to with their social and emotional needs. They also need a skilled professional adept at developing a curriculum to guide them down the path of learning.

Instead of being the source of all knowledge, teachers must know how to organize and present information in the most effective and efficient ways. By effective, I am talking about increasing learning by retaining knowledge and skills over time and transferring it to new situations. Since educators are in the business of learning, it is essential that student learning be the measure of effectiveness. By efficient, I am referring to how a practice saves time. Thus, if a student could learn the same amount of material in half the time using a different practice, the time-saving technique used would be considered efficient.

You will find that adopting effective and efficient practices doesn’t require you to add to what you are already doing, but rather adjust current practices. By incorporating these ideas, students will retain more knowledge from the beginning of the year at the end of each year and carry that knowledge with them to future years, thus increasing the amount of time the teacher spends on gradelevel content. This enables you as the teacher to save time and creates a viable curriculum for your students.

Students will always need someone to go to with their social and emotional needs as well as someone highly skilled at developing a curriculum and guiding students down the path of learning.