Resources For Teachers Who are Lifelong Learners
Being an educator is a life-long learning process. As an educator, you must have often felt that teaching others is simultaneously a process of enlightening yourself about new ways of communicating important information. In order to effectively transfer meaningful knowledge, it is essential to adopt the Lifelong Learning Mindset to keep up with the needs of 21st Century students.
“ Lifelong learning is more than adult education or training — it is a mindset and a habit for people to acquire. It creates the challenge to understand, explore, and support new essential dimensions of learning such as: (1) self- directed learning, (2) learning on demand, (3) informal learning, and (4) collaborative and organizational learning.”Gerhard Ficher, University of Boulder Colorado | Lifelong Learning: Changing Mindsets
As the primary resource and role model for children during their pre-K to 12 journey, it is imperative that educators stay up-to-date within the education space. Here are 5 resources to help you keep up with current global teaching trends and upskill while expanding your network:
1. TeacherWit : A Vibrant Community For Teachers, By Teachers
This free platform provides a global learning community for educators to share and learn from one another. A fast growing community with over 600 uniquely engaged members in just four months, TeacherWit is the best online platform for educators to keep up with multicultural trends and best practices for effective teaching. This platform is a great place for educators to network and find exciting cross-cultural teaching projects both locally and internationally.
BONUS: The platform regularly organizes inspiring live online events with education specialists from across industries. Our most recent live webinar was hosted by Kath Murdoch, the revolutionary Australian education consultant and bestselling author of “The Power of Inquiry”. In case you missed the live event, sign up to keep an eye out for exclusive access to the recordings of this and other information-packed webinars on TeacherWit!
2. International Comprehensive : Professional Learning Platform for Educators
“Education is not the filling of a pot but the lighting of a fire”
W.B. Yeats’ astute words are put to practice by the wide-variety of courses by International Comprehensive (IC) to empower educators. IC is an educator-oriented platform which emphasizes professional learning to enhance the student’s learning experience. The courses on this platform are curated through an inquiry based approach which is why each module is interspersed with real-world stories to facilitate authentic learning. Learning as an Inquiry Process is one of their most sought-after courses which enables educators to successfully facilitate independent thinking and student-led learning to foster a healthy classroom environment. Further, the curriculum of each course focuses on building 3 essential lifelong competencies for educators:
Personal and Social Competency
Thinking Competency
Communication and Collaboration Competency
IC offers a rich catalog of research-based and practice-oriented courses with unlimited access so they can be absorbed at your own pace. This platform is the perfect spark for educators to ignite Yeats’ fire!
3. Project Zero: Harvard’s Thinking Routine Toolkit for Versatile Teaching
This platform equips arts and humanities teachers with inquiry-based thinking routine toolbox. The platform offers a plethora of activities and prompts for educators to propel enlightened educational processes in the classroom. The routines range from core thinking to global thinking and help promote conversations amongst students to dig deep into ideas and perspectives. With holistic activity ideas like Chalk Talk and Circle of Viewpoints, this is a great toolkit for all educators teaching across disciplines and age-groups.
4. Youcubed: Stanford’s Mathematics Mindset For STEM Educators
Youcubed aims to improve student understanding of mathematics by making teachers more mindful of skewed performance statistics and empowering them with well-researched STEM teaching techniques. The math resources range from tested lessons in calculus to apps and games for fun ways to teach your students technical concepts. Youcubed is based on the growth mindset outlook that helps teachers harness the potential in students to understand and solve high level math.
5. Learning For Justice : To Tactfully Discuss Social Issues In The Classroom
This interdisciplinary platform offers educators a number of multimedia resources like lessons, guides, frameworks and short films to encourage authentic shared learning around themes of social justice. The teaching strategies for K-12 teachers such as community inquiry and sensitive communication are particularly helpful to foster healthy curiosity around social topics like race, gender and immigration.
Lifelong learners acknowledge that overarching forces also play a role in the way students process information and learn to discriminate between objects. Research has shown that studying through the means of two languages can have an extremely positive impact on a child’s development, academic performance and executive control. If you’re interested in incorporating bilingual teaching modules in your classroom, then this blog by the International Canadian Academy is for you. If any of these resources resonated with you, share your experience on the TeacherWit community forum!