12 Characteristics Of An Effective Teacher

Early childhood development and education lays the foundation for the holistic development of children to reach their fullest potential. Henry Adams quotes, “a teacher affect eternity, he can never tell where his influences stops” (Bird, 2012). As a result of this far reaching impact, teachers’ disposition, personalities, professional and academic qualification will contribute to the learning experiences of the children in their care. Stipek 2010, indicates that teachers’ expectation about children affect their own behavior toward students and differentiate between the learning outcome, forgetting that children learn at different rates and learning styles. He also writes that, while some kinds of differential behavior toward students who vary

While qualifications and professionalism will play their role, these characteristics will determine how teachers teach, what they teach and how they will evaluate their students and ultimately will contribute to life-long impact on children. The need to provide teachers with professional development, safe and comfortable learning and teaching environment, adequate resources and material will assist them to provide a learning environment for children. Governments and other stakeholders must make every necessary effort to provide teachers with the tools both in theory and practices to ensure that children, both normal and those with exceptional needs have quality and equal learning experiences. In this regard, the Island of Grenada has developed and implemented policies which supports special needs education, quality education for all and equality in learning experiences from as early as early

UNICEF 2002, stated that quality education includes learners who are healthy, well-nourished and ready to participate and learn, environments that are safe and gender-sensitive and provides adequate facilities and resources, a curriculum that is relevant and reflect basic skills in the areas of literacy, numeracy and life-skills, trained teachers who uses child-centered teaching and outcome that encompasses knowledge, skills, and attitudes and are linked to national goals for education. Grenada being a member of UNICEF is required to fulfill obligations of quality education. In its Strategic Plan for Education Enhancement and Development 2006 -2015 lay out specifics for promoting quality education. Section 4 of the plan is dedicated to the development of quality education. One such policy is to make the various resources available to the system more effective and target educational output for improvement. To this end, daycare centers and nurseries were to be modernized and secured according to early childhood development standards. Another policy is to develop a teacher-centers professional development and support strategy for improvement in the teacher service. This means that all teachers should be qualified and or graduates and policies regarding teacher recruitment, training and deployment are adopted. Most of these are still ongoing. In proving the necessary adequate service