Good teachers are well planned, hit deadlines and build relationships. Great teachers enhance this foundation by keeping all students connected and engaged.

They do this by knowing their ahkonga, what’s important to them and where they are at, within the current body of learning being covered.

We keep students in the conversation for longer, by asking the right questions of the right people at the right time. Our must do’s are to make sure we plan and prepare, hand back work with appropriate feedback, feed forward information in a timely fashion, and work to build and sustain authentic relationships. From there we can start to move fowrard from good to great, we move by ticking off all the must do’s as teachers, and then adding to our kete the should and could do’s.

These are the things that make certain teachers memorable for their students. In simple terms we adopt a “one size fits one” approach, where the trust is evident, there is a passion and enthusiasm for who and what we teach and individual learning difficulties of acceleration or extension are met with a genuine love, of meeting each student at the door with what they individually bring. We can prompt, scaffold, challenge and draw out students to be brave with their learning and this includes removing the fear of failure and all the while both the student and the teacher have fun and enjoy the process, not just the outcomes.

Over time the best teachers draw students in and then draw out what it is they know, what they don’t do is just paint it on.