BECOMING 21^st CENTURY TEACHER TIPS

BY: RIDA AFRILYASANTI

21st century teaching

Teaching means learning. While teaching, you will also learn from your students. Moreover, your students are not the same learners as you were, so you have to catch up and up date with their development and recent situations. You have to live up to what your societies expect from you. I quote what John Dewy ever said, that is “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”

Therefore, we have to be able to catch up with current trends in education, not against it and stay in your own education system. Moreover, you have to be able to engage your teaching with technology that can aspire, encourage, and inspire your students.

Furthermore, as we all know, we are now teaching 21^st century students. Therefore, what we have to do is also to be 21^st century teachers. What 21^st century teachers need then? Here are some tips you can consider in order to enrich and utilize yourselves to be 21^st century teachers:

1. Recognize the differences of the students and their recent society. You also need to know your students as an individual. Your students are not all alike and your duty is to help each of them to develop. Give each of your students the opportunity to shine.
2. Apply different teaching strategies for different situations. You have to be able to recognize and familiarize your students’ readiness, interests, and learning style compare to the content, process, and product (teaching target) to choose the most appropriate teaching materials and methods.
3. In turn, use the multiple teaching strategies to facilitate all of your students. A variety of representations at the same time also need to be employed to increase the chance of reaching all students.
4. Recognize and familiarize your students’ learning habit, their learning styles, different speeds, level of thinking, and ability to connect the materials and their contexts.
5. Integrate a various set of activities such as skill practice, problem solving, manipulative, games, technology integration, and other media.
6. Have the assessment for not only the product but also the process of learning itself. Focus the assessment on qualitative assessment more that quantitative assessment. Use different kinds of assessment methods, for instance: test, homework assignments, journals, discussions, presentations and so forth. The results of the assessment then should be used to construct plan lessons for the skills that are not mastered yet by the students.
7. Never underestimate or overestimate your students before you really know their ability. Do pre- test in advance.
8. Be familiar with your students’ interest. This will help you to determine the most appropriate topics and activities. By adapting and engaging the teaching within their interest, they will be engaged and active in the teaching and learning process. As teachers, you need sometimes socialize with your students, however, still consider the limits.
9. Have teacher journal. By keeping noting down the activities you employed and its suitability with their ability and interest, you will know what works and does not work for them, and what needs to modified and how to modify it.
10. Apprehend that teaching is always evolving. It is evolutionary. Don’t just be stuck in your place and proud of your ancient teaching strategies while the world has been changing a lot.
11. Help your students to understand the importance of learning. Make them feel responsible on their learning by connect it to their context and society needs.
12. 21^st century teachers have to have these characteristics; they have to be:

• 

  21st century teaching

  adaptor

• communicator
• learner
• visionary
• leader
• model
• collaborator