What are the contributing factors to be an effective educator in the 21st century?

 

An educator is a person whom delivered the knowledge possess by themselves to another person by playing role of mentor, teacher or advisor. Delivering knowledge as an effective educator to adults or young learners required some great skills and abilities.

First and foremost, the educator must ensure that they are well versed the subjects or skills to be taught. This is very important since an educator can only deliver the best if they understands the knowledge to be delivered. Without a proper understanding, the delivery of knowledge might get wrong or the student could not understand it well too.  As per Howards Hendricks quote “The teacher has not taught until the student has learned”, the educator themselves must be willing to learn new techniques, explore and experiment new pedagogy for an effective education delivery. The educator must understand that, ‘education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.’ (John Dewey). The educator must not limit their learning process to enhance the existing skill or knowledge only, instead an educator must be willing to learn new skills and knowledge too, especially in a global term. The diverse knowledge of globalized cultures and traditions, can portrait an educator as most interesting diversified personality between learners. The exposure of globalized issues can make the learners be more proactive and alerted not only whereabouts of their surrounding but beyond that the world perhaps.

To deliver all these wide range of information, a gadget can be a useful tool. These tools enable the delivery of lesson’s data to be delivered in the most interesting ways by including audio, video and even colorful slides. These tools enhancing the learning process by stimulating the brain of learner to imagine or even view the real-life images related to the lesson delivery’s data at another point of view. An educator must ensure their learners are exposed to real life characters and realia to receive the most realistic and spontaneous knowledge ever. At this 21^st century, there are new gadgets and technologies been introduced almost every single day. The educator in order to become the most effective ones, must be a technology ‘vampire’ hunting new information and keep themselves updated regarding the newly introduced technologies. This personality of updated version in technologies creates most positive communication between learners especially young learners. Being a technology geek is very vital to enhance and boost their lessons effectively at the same time to portrait a great role model in trying new things without hesitation.

An effective educator must be able to perform many different tasks to ensure smooth flow in preparing lesson plan’s aids. The educator must be able to perform multitasking in creating the most effective teaching aids without much hassle. Gail Goldwin once said, Good Teaching is a ¼ preparation and ¾ theatre, yet I believe the effectiveness of theatre delivery is depending on the attractiveness and involvement during the preparation. An expensive and multicolored teaching aid does not ensure the delivery of lesson is successful, while a simple yet understandable teaching aid might create wonders and delivers the lesson’s data successfully. The character of multitasking in an educator, allows space to be creative and innovative, especially recycling the old items or even manipulate the previous lesson aids into a new dimension. This type of acts will always attract learners to pay attention since the showcasing of old items into a new dimension is ultimately interesting thing with a wow factor.

An educator must be willing to play multiple roles in their classroom to provide a flawless academic session. An educator must be a great classroom manager by providing the most conducive learning spaces for their learners. A classroom session with less or none interruptions’ is very important to follow the steps of lesson plan. A simple interruption such as chair moving or limited space with noise and bad smells can make the learners attention been diverted while the teaching gone wrong. Whereas the educator also must know how and when to control their learners misbehaves especially among young learners. The educator also must be an excellent administrator as if to manage all the paper works related to job or even marking and providing grades to the learners. Since the grading and marking is the tool determine the educator’s effort been paid off or not, it is most vital to always manage them accordingly and keep all files up to date. Last but not least, ensure all facilities among the classroom is in good as if in working condition. When it comes to use a television, projector, fans or even whiteboards, they must be in working condition. It is an effective educator’s responsibility to ensure all the facilities among the classroom is in working condition and can be apply for their lesson delivery sessions.

While all this is in good working condition, usage of wrong methodology might overtake all the efforts to gone wrong. There are quite numbers of methodology still a student-centered learning method always the best, in encouraging all learners to participate in lesson. Abhijit Naskar, cognitive and behavioral neuroscientist once said,” The Teacher Should Be Like The Conductor In The Orchestra, Not The Trainer In The Circus,”. Conducting or planning a student-centered learning lesson, spontaneously will create an opportunity to all student to engage themselves in the learning process and make the knowledge delivery is successful.

Educator can be as effective as they want by considering the above factors and make the learning as fun as possible.