Learn from the 2013 National Teacher of the Year
The early years of education are very important and help build a strong foundation for an individual’s personal and professional life later on. There continues to be a global push toward making education more meaningful and relevant to get a student ready for the outside world.
A recent interview with this year’s National Teacher of the Year, Jeff Charbonneau, was very inspiring. Some of the core traits he focuses on with his students will be very valuable in the workplace down the line.
Jeff, who teaches in a high school in Yakima Valley, Washington, is primarily a science teacher. He teaches chemistry, physics, and engineering, and thus STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) areas are his focal points.
Some of the key points that stood out in his interview include:
Promote out of box thinking. Jeff keeps a backward clock in his classroom and wants his students to look at everyday objects differently. This is especially useful in the workplace where creative thinkers are hard to find, yet very valuable. This isn’t something that can be trained overnight—it takes time to build. It is a practice that is either inborn or learned over a period of time.
Instill self-confidence in an individual. Students are in a very protected zone. They are ably guided by parents, teachers, coaches, etc., which is why setting the right expectations at that age is very important to help them branch out with self-confidence when they get into the workplace.
Build the right relationships. This is yet another valuable lesson that can help shape a successful career. Jeff focuses on building the right and positive relationships with his students with confidence that such a relationship will pave the way to teach them even the most complex subjects. By doing so, he is setting for his students a good example which will help them emulate this behavior in their lives, too.
These may sound like simple and straightforward points, but unless they are practiced over time, they are not very easy to embrace. Whether or not we had teachers like Jeff who helped us build these traits early on, it would be totally worth it to evaluate how we can apply these points in our workplace to make a difference in our performance—as well as to benefit the organizations for which we work.
