Cramer Music

The Most Important Qualities of an Outstanding Educator

 

 

An outstanding music educator would be intelligent, well-educated, perceptive, flexible, responsible, self-examining, honest, prepared, organized, fair, consistent and confident.

 

An outstanding music educator is a master of the subject matter and strives to remain so.  You can not teach what you do not know.  Consequently, this educator can never stop learning.  This entails keeping current with the latest developments in teaching approaches by reading professional journals, attending professional conferences, taking graduate courses and workshops, as well as, performing.

 

An outstanding music educator learns from experienced colleagues the “tricks of the classroom.”  These professionals have already determined what works on a day to day basis.  The outstanding educator supplements the “tried and true” with new ideas and approaches introduced in workshops, clinics, graduate courses and convention sessions when and where appropriate.  This will keep the teacher fresh and the classroom exciting for the students.

 

The outstanding teacher is able to evaluate his/her classroom results.  If a lesson did not go well, the teacher takes responsibility to find another approach to reach the student.  This implies that the teacher can admit he/she made a mistake and will work to correct it.

 

The outstanding teacher is over-prepared and attempts to anticipate possible student and/or teaching problems.  Plans B,C and D from the teacher’s mental store of alternative approaches would be waiting for emergency use.  Only a highly organized and detail-oriented person can do this.

 

Finally, this educator makes a virtue of fairness and consistency in matters of discipline and student evaluations and, has the self-confidence to implement all decisions.