Principle 1 Master Teachers start where their students are.

All learners construct knowledge from an inner scaffolding of their individual and social
experiences, emotions, will aptitudes, beliefs, values, self-awareness, purpose, and more. In other
words, if you are learning in a classroom, what you understand is determined by how you
understand things, who you are, and what you already know as much as by what is covered, and
how and by whom it is delivered. Peter Senge

Principle 2 Master Teachers know where their students are going.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a great deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where ---“ said Alice.

“ Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Lewis Carol, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Principle 3 Master Teachers expect their students to get to their goal.

Effort-based ability is the belief that all students can do rigorous academic work at high
standards, even if they are far behind academically and need a significant amount of time to
catch up. Educators who carry this belief into their practice are not unrealistic about the
obstacles they and their students face. They simply have not given up.
Jonathan Saphier

Principle 4 Master Teachers support their students along the way.

True learning is figuring out how to use what you already know
in order to go beyond what you already think.
Jerome Bruner
Principle 5 Master Teachers use feedback to help them and their students get better.

We use the general term assessment to refer to all those activities undertaken by teachers
– and by students in assessing themselves – that provide information to be used as feedback to
modify teaching and learning activities.
Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam

Principle 6 Master Teachers focus on quality rather than quantity.

It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.
Mahatma Gandhi

Principle 7 Master Teachers never work harder than their students.

How to tell student what to look for without telling them what to see is the dilemma of
teaching. Lascelles Abercrombie

The problem is not that we do not know enough – t is that we do not do what we already
know. We do not act on or refine or apply those principles and practices that virtually every
teacher knows. Mike Schmoker