Teachers as Professionals?

In an ongoing discussion David Warlick, Will Richardson, and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach have been discussing teachers as professionals.  I thought David's description of what professional educators needs to do in today's conditions were very applicable to our class....

It’s an interesting conversation that Will has instigated, because it asks us to think hard about what a teacher is and does in this technology-rich, information-driven, and rapidly changing world. As I think about it, it seems that teaching well and appropriately to these new conditions involves:

• Constantly researching and re-experting yourself in your subject area.
• Continually accessing, evaluating, and appropriately applying new techniques and strategies with your learners.
• Engage in action-research to test original and class situation-specific strategies.
• Engaging in ongoing and constructive conversations that extend the knowledge and experience of individual educators to group knowledge.
• Skillfully finding and developing authentic learning resources and sharing them with a greater education community.
• Remaining aware of current events, advances in technology, and social conditions and engaging in ongoing and collaborative curriculum development that addresses and leverages change.
• Liaising with the local community to bring the village into the classroom, and to project the classroom out into the community.
• Engaging in professional development, including self-directed, local school authority opportunities, and larger conferences.
• Practicing a learning lifestyle, sharing personal learning within your professional environment, modeling lifelong learning.

Staying in tune and up to date via a good set of feeds (blogs and wikis and other news sources) is critical and something we as professionals should all be doing.