The old saying "Do as I say, not as I do" no longer holds any weight when it comes from a teacher's mouth. Students are less likely to obey verbal directives if they see that the teacher doesn't even follow his or her own rules. What you need to do is model the positive behavior that you want your students to demonstrate. Following this same premise, if a teacher wants their students to learn how to be accountable for their own actions, the teacher must also hold themselves accountable. This means that follow through becomes extremely important in the classroom, even with the most routine activities. Holding students accountable each and every time they miss an assignment or homework, even the simplest of tasks, is critical for ensuring that accountability is reinforced.

Finding new ways to incorporate technology in the classroom is the focus of many educational conferences and workshops. During a conversation at #SocialEdCon at ISTE 2012, several teachers were discussing why it’s difficult to implement new technology. One of the most common barriers to technology integration is not providing adequate professional development for teachers to feel as though they can be effective users of technology when working with their students. I agree, having the latest and greatest devices at one’s disposal doesn’t automatically translate into developing creative learning environments. However, as tweeted by Sean Junkins (@sjunkins), “I have yet to have a student tell me they can’t use technology in class because they haven’t received PD on it.”

In a typical academic setting, students may all be on the same grade level, but are inevitably different in terms of skill and ability levels. This is especially true in career and technical education, where the curriculum is competency-based. Therefore, at any given moment a classroom full of 20 students could be ready to learn 20 different skills. This makes it a bit difficult to manage from the teacher's perspective, as it is physically impossible to teach different lessons to each student during the course of one class period.