All of the great teachers I have known and observed are motivated in personal ways. They teach in large part for what I think of as the “selfish unselfish” reasons. They are totally focused on helping their students – they are altruists – but they have a personal need to see themselves as helpers. They feel that teaching helps them become better people. “I have trouble,” a young math teacher in California tells me, “thinking of myself doing something else. I mean, I know I could do a lot of other things, but I don’t think I want to be someone else. Who I am when I’m working with my kids here, that who I really want to be.”

 
These teachers share a motive for teaching that has two sides. They really do want to help people. And they really do want to be the kind of person who helps people. It’s all about the people they help. But it’s also all about shaping their own stories. This is the part of the puzzle I think we can fairly call the HEART.

 
These great teachers really know how to teach – and, a shade differently, they really love the subjects they teach. They are good at the surface actions of good teaching: they explain things clearly; they build trust and respect in their classrooms; they manage their classes well; they sequence lessons in good, developmental ways. But they are also good at the deeper essence of teaching: they love knowledge, and they want to learn more, every day, about the subjects they teach. This part of the puzzle we can call the MIND.

 
These great teachers also have a great intuition for when to change their styles of teaching on the fly. They don’t lecture for an hour because that what the schedule calls for; instead, they sense when their students need a different approach to a topic – when it’s time to settle down and write, or to break up into teams, or to share some essential information in a quick lecture. They move from mode to mode as teachers because they are so well tuned into the feelings, thoughts and rhythms of the room. This part of the puzzle we can call the EAR.

 
So, that’s what the great teachers I have gotten to know all share in common: they have the teacher’s heart, the teacher’s mind, and the teacher’s ear. They want deeply to help their students learn and grow, in part because they feel a personal mission to be that kind of person; they love learning more about the subjects they teach and fill their classrooms with that love of learning; and they can feel when to change their teaching styles to fit the needs of their students. Heart, mind and ear. Great teachers – whether big and blustery or modest and mild, carefully organized and flying by the seat of their pants – have these three gifts, and work at keeping them finely tuned.