At a recent conference, the topic was the Millennial Generation, those born after 1985, and their educational needs.

The speaker gave us a couple of old chestnuts — today’s college graduate will have five or six different jobs over the course of his/her career and the relative mastery of any field will be out of date in a decade — as proof of the need for lifelong learning among millennials. But this isn’t news for those of us in schools. We are constantly being asked to handle new assignments or assume additional duties.

And even the foundational work that we do in the classroom changes significantly from decade to decade, as the profiles of our students change and teaching techniques and curriculum evolve. In other words, the work of an independent school teacher changes rapidly and demands ongoing professional development and growth.

There are two keys for excellent teachers.

The first is curiosity. We ask our colleagues about how they handle certain topics or situations; we read about new findings in our fields and about teaching; we think about our students and how we can work more effectively with each one. Outstanding teachers are always looking for ways to improve our ability to connect with students and help them master our subjects.

Curiosity by itself isn’t enough, though. It needs to be associated with a solid liberal arts background.

What do I mean by the liberal arts? They are the academic background as well as the professional toolkit that allow an individual to identify and solve problems that possibly (probably?) didn’t even exist at the time that the liberal arts education was received.

A liberal arts education emphasizes perception, data collection, analysis, reflection, brainstorming of a wide variety of possible options, rigorous decision making, communication, collaboration, and more.

These are the qualities that the Millennials will need during their professional careers, and they are the same qualities that independent school teachers have been relying on for decades.