Almost every year, we are faced with the task of finding -- and hiring --new teachers. What makes a great teacher? A school's success depends on the quality of the faculty, and any school leader's answer to that question will tell you much about the school.
For us, great teachers have three essential qualities. They must be 1) constant, and hungry, learners, 2) committed to knowing young people and their families well, and 3) supportive and collegial members of a professional community.
Why these three?
1) Being a constant and hungry learner. These are the teachers whose excitement about learning is contagious. They read educational articles, seek out their colleagues to get feedback, get visibly excited by a new vocabulary strategy, and talk about education with their friends. They start book clubs, they take on leadership roles, and they model for students what passion for content and one's life's work can look like.
One teacher recently came to find me to tell me about an "aha" moment he had about high level readers. A few days later, he borrowed a book and read it over the weekend, then shared his thoughts with me. Soon after that, he was inspired by a webcast he saw about teacher leadership, prompting him to change his perspective on his role as grade leader, and initiate a new team inquiry project.
He not only models for other teachers what it means to be an expert, but he models this for students, and in the process, becomes even more effective. This makes our professional community engaging, and intellectually rigorous, and this helps us keep our teachers!
2) Knowing students well. Good teachers need to know their students well, must be able to spot a good or bad day, to remember what happened in science or PE, to put a hand on a shoulder when needed, and make a phone call home to learn about a child's family and past school experiences.
Recently I watched a teacher with a student in the hallway. The child was having a bad day. I heard the teacher say "I have been watching you closely and I've noticed a change in you. I spoke with your mom about it a few days ago, and we are both trying to understand what could be going on." The student began to talk as they stood close to each other. This is the kind of experience that every student needs in a school because it says that there are people who SEE them, and want to understand them better. Being known is an essential precondition for real learning and improvement.
3) Being a great colleague. Our best work is done through conversation and teamwork. Our teachers are so much better when they work together than when they work by themselves, so they need to be able to function in teams in a way that maximizes their strengths. Some of these skills are learned on the job (unfortunately these are not taught in teacher preparation programs), but they are essential to combat the isolation that teachers can feel in their classrooms.
In a recent meeting, I watched one teacher question the grading practices of another, but with such curiosity and openness -- and dedication to students' learning -- that it led the other teacher to change her mind without defensiveness. No teacher (or principal, for that matter!) is perfect, and we need each other to push each other to get better.
There is a lot of talk about what it takes to be a great teacher right now, as the federal government is looking at ways to link teacher performance to student data. Check out the Atlantic Monthly article that describes some current research about this very topic, and please, weigh in with your own thoughts in the comments below!
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