It was quite a list of teachers. Some young, some old; some bursting with energy, some quiet and purposeful; some dramatic, and some calm and reflective. All different.

 

Is it possible that these great teachers had nothing in common at all? Could it be true that beyond my own personal list of great teachers, among the thousands and thousands of the very best there really might be no common traits or strategies?

 

Looking hard at my list, and adding to the exercise a good deal of careful study of teachers who are the most extraordinarily effective at what they do, I came to see that there are actually two qualities that genuinely great teachers share – one practical and one more personal and emotional.
The first is an intuition about when to change teaching styles to match the spirit of a given class in a given moment.

 

The second is genuine joy in being a teacher. Great teachers certainly share many other qualities, and many other skills and attributes are likely necessary to be a great teacher, but these are the big two shared by every great teacher I’ve had the privilege to know.

 

The great teacher is likely to have a great command of what people often call “best practices.” Yet some great teachers avoid or ignore them and still manage to get fantastic results, while many who used the best-proven methods just don’t translate them into outstanding learning among their students.

 

But two qualities are present all the time, no exceptions, among the teachers I’ve come to know and admire who are the best of the best at this uniquely demanding and rewarding job: first, that flexibility of approach and readiness to move from one style of teaching to another when the moment calls for it; and second, that inner happiness about being a teacher that kids can always feel and always appreciate. Both are there in every case of greatness.
“What I like about my math teacher,” one of my students at Pacific Hills School in Los Angeles tells me,

 

is that she’s not always doing the same thing, like a lot of teachers I’ve had before where they’re good teachers and everything, but sometimes you just feel like if they would be like an ordinary person instead of a teacher teacher, it would be a lot better.
You want to know that the teacher’s a person, and that if you feel a connection – if you learn from them – it’s not just because it’s their job, but because there’s something real happening between you. And you can’t feel that if she’s always doing the same thing. To me, that means she’s always doing her job.
But I don’t want her to be always just doing her job. Sometimes I want to feel like she’s listening to me because she really wants to, because she thinks I have something to say, not just because it’s her job. So if she’d telling us all something, that’s great. But then, please, listen a little, share a little, do something a little different that shows that you’re still there, still a person, and still paying attention even though your lesson’s over.

 

Students can recognize the teacher as a professional with a plan and a goal and a job to do, but they also know what it means to be seen and engaged by a real person. They want to see the range of who we are as teachers and as people who think and feel – not all the time, not including the embarrassing or private aspects of who we are, but including the pleasures and surprises of living and working with a roomful of interesting young people.
They want us to be real, as well as skillful. And they particularly love it when we’re happy, when we overcome the challenges of the classroom and share the pride and joy of working with our students to make important things happen.
“This is not the kind of thing you can fake,” Ben Ramos, a veteran history teacher at my school in Los Angeles, tells me.

 

I think, first and foremost, any teacher must behave like a regular old human being and then behave like a teacher. Being a great teacher, as simple as it sounds, begins with liking kids.
I truly believe and have seen so many times that the poor teachers truly don’t like kids as much as they probably should. For 19 years I have found this to be the case again and again. Human first, teacher second. I think a lot of teachers have it backwards, preachy and intellectual first. I have spoken to many students at the two schools that I have worked at in my 19 years and most of them find this to be a huge turnoff. I know that I can be intellectual with them, and I am, but I’m human first and foremost.