Horace Mann, the architect of U.S. public education, was the first president of Antioch College. Since 1852 its mission has been the education of the whole person. The teacher preparation program continues this tradition and has adopted the following principles.

• Teachers must be aware of what is known about how people learn. Findings from both quantitative and qualitative research on learning can prepare teachers to be not only truly informed about how their students learn, but also able to identify and understand real obstacles to learning within the individual and the group.
  
  
• Teachers must learn to be critical thinkers--curious, willing to make mistakes, and competent in the methods of inquiry. Participation in scholarly activity, self-reflection, peer critique, and social analysis, provides the stimulation, professional enthusiasm, competence, and confidence for a career of lifelong learning.
  
  
• Teachers need to acknowledge the powerful ethical dimensions of teaching. Teachers can use their authority, expertise, and opportunity to enhance the dignity of each student and to construct the context for mutual respect and care. They can teach students the character traits required of principled and caring citizens in a democracy and sensitize students to the ethical dimensions of everyday life.
  
  
• Intellectual aspects of learning must be balanced by emotional aspects. Children are people first, and people need emotional nurturance as much as intellectual challenge. All students must be educated as the whole persons who they are -- body, mind, and spirit.
  
  
• Teaching others requires a clear commitment to anti-bias forms of thought, coupled with an appreciation for cultural differences.
  
  
• Elementary school teachers need to be knowledgeable of and excited about the subject matter they teach and prepared to continue to develop subject-matter competency.
  
  
• All teachers must be fully cognizant of our dependence on natural eco-systems and be able to teach their understanding using real-world problems.
  
  
• Teachers are empowered not only by classroom knowledge and skills, but also by knowledge of the greater systems within which they must work, specifically the school as a dynamic institution, and schooling, as a variety of models and systems in need of critique and reform.
  
  
• Education program faculty and the supervising mentor teachers need to model the qualities of good instructional practice that new teachers are expected to construct and recreate. The institution of learning needs to provide a supportive educational milieu that fosters learning and development through its everyday activities.
  
  
• Teachers need to be able to construct student-centered and culturally-responsive curriculum for their students, that is, curricular content that allows students to make frequent associations between what is taught and their own experiences.
  
  
• Teachers need to learn thoughtful planning skills for effective teaching that consist of the identification of learning hypotheses in each unit/lesson and the ability to clearly articulate the relationships between the hypotheses and the activities of the unit/lesson. Furthermore, they must be able to identify appropriate assessment methods for that unit/lesson that will inform subsequent planning (hypothesis development).