I have often thought about the teachers I worked with in my many years in education who were genuinely exceptional—those who were truly great. While most of the teachers I taught with were good, rare were teachers who I would call “great.” What makes someone a great teacher? Do great teachers do the same things that good teachers do, but simply do these things more often or better? When I asked a number of my teacher friends to answer the question: “What makes a teacher a great teacher?” most replied, “That’s a hard question!” Indeed it is.
While we know intuitively that having a good teacher matters in terms of how well students learn, research has shown that the impact of teachers on student learning is immense. In The Difference is Great Teachers,1 Eric Hanushek informs us that “… in a single academic year, a good teacher will get a gain of one and a half grade-level equivalents, while a bad teacher will get a gain equivalent of just half a year.” If Hanushek is correct, a student at the end of elementary school who has had poor teachers throughout will be functioning around the Grade 3 level, while students who have had great teachers throughout will be functioning around the Grade 9 level—a difference of six years of schooling. The quality of classroom teaching clearly matters, and it matters a lot. This brings us back to the question: What do great teachers actually do in the classroom? What are the essential qualities that teachers must have if they are going to be truly great? What I would like to share with you are the ten qualities I believe are essential if someone is to be a great teacher.
1. Relationships
First, I am convinced that the single most important quality all great teachers possess is the ability to develop great relationships with their students. Kids don’t learn well from people they don’t like—and kids like people who also like them. If you don’t honestly like other people’s children (AKA: students) then I believe it is impossible to be a great teacher. When you ask most high school graduates, “What was it that made your great teachers so great?” their reply typically sounds something like, “They really cared about me. They cared about me as a person, and they cared about my success as a student.” Achieving and maintaining an effective student-teacher relationship is essential to great teaching.
This relationship has numerous components, but for brevity, I will address the two that I consider foundational. First, if you want to be a great teacher, you have to be patient with students who are struggling to learn and can’t quite get it just yet. There is always tomorrow. Second, the great teachers I have worked with are future-oriented. They can look past the present behaviours and follies of their students and see future possibilities that their students cannot see for themselves—and they work diligently to let their students know what they are capable of, both now and in the future.
2. Knowledge
The second most important quality that I have seen in great teachers is that they have an intimate knowledge of their subject area and they are passionate about what they teach. Their excitement and enthusiasm about what they are teaching are contagious. They know their subject area(s) exceedingly well, and they know how to build bridges from their subject matter to their students in such a way that what they are teaching is interesting, engaging, and relevant. They can teach poetry using Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, Justin Bieber, or Taylor Swift because they choose content that engages their students in order to teach concepts their students need to learn.
3. Feedback
The third quality that I have witnessed among great teachers is they consistently give honest, prompt, and accurate feedback to students in regard to their learning. In an article about what makes great teachers, The Economist2 states that giving students honest, prompt, and accurate feedback is the single most significant factor in helping students learn. In my efforts to become a great teacher, I attempted to give my students feedback that was frequent, prompt, and honest—well… most often, honest. Teachers deal with ethical dilemmas on a daily basis, and one of the most difficult ethical dilemmas teachers face is in the area of assessment. What is the right thing to do if you want to encourage a student to keep trying but the student achieves a failing grade of 45% on a written assessment, even though they gave it their best effort? You know the student will be crushed and discouraged with the failing grade. Do you give the 45%, or do you award some additional marks in order to get the student to a passing grade so as not to discourage them? In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Spock (who claimed to never lie) was once caught in a lie. A crew member confronts him and says, “You lied!” Spock replies, “I exaggerated.” I never lied to my students about their marks, but in certain circumstances, I exaggerated. What do you do in situations like this?
4. Balance
The fourth quality I have seen in all of the great teachers I have worked with is the overall sense of balance they have in their lives. They reject the notion that they need to have work-life balance because they see this separation as a false dichotomy. Why? Because for them, teaching is a vocation, and they are living the life they are called to when they teach as well as when they are outside of school. Great teachers realize that they can’t help every student in every way their students may need, and yet somehow, they don’t get discouraged or lose hope when faced with the impossibility of ever fully completing the task of teaching. Like the famous serenity prayer advises, great teachers are able to change the things they can, know the things they cannot change, and possess the wisdom to know the difference.
5. Continuous Improvement
Fifth, all the great teachers I have ever seen have a great deal of energy and a tremendous work ethic, and fundamental to this work ethic is an ethic of continuous improvement. They are constantly trying to become better at teaching. They are continually learning: learning about the subjects they teach, about the students they teach, about how kids learn, and anything else they think will help them become better teachers. I have found great teachers to be naturally curious learners themselves. Much of what great teachers have learned about teaching originates from their students. They are not the least bit afraid of having students teach them—sometimes about course content and other times about what is going to work well in their classrooms with a particular student or group of students.
6. Teaching Awareness
The sixth quality of great teachers is they are always teachers. What does this mean? Great teachers seem to always be in the mode of “teaching awareness.” When they unexpectedly come across some object or article or idea they could use in class, they notice it instinctively and figure out how they can use it in their teaching. It doesn’t matter whether this happens during the teaching year or in the middle of a summer vacation in a far-off place. They don’t miss things that will help their students because just under the surface, at all times and in all places, they are teachers. The sense of “teaching awareness” never leaves them. It is in the marrow of who they are as persons.
7. Support
Seventh, great teachers realize that they cannot be truly effective in the classroom if they attempt the difficult work of teaching by themselves. Great teachers typically have two communities of support—a personal community (family and/or friends who support them outside of school) and a professional support community (teaching colleagues, administrators, and professional organizations who mentor and assist them in their work within the profession). You simply cannot be a great teacher on your own. It’s just too hard, and it’s far too much work for one person to carry alone. Great teachers have learned that great teaching is a team sport.
8. Storytelling
The eighth quality: great teachers are great storytellers. We love to tell stories and we love to hear stories. Great teachers understand that stories are a wonderful way to teach because people inevitably insert themselves into the story. We listen to stories and judge the actions of the characters with thoughts like: “I wouldn’t have done that—that’s not going to work. I would have done this—that’s way better!” We relate to the characters in the stories: “Oh yeah, that reminds me of the time when I…” We do this, and so do our students. Stories serve as windows through which we can see the world in new ways, and they also serve as mirrors by which we can see ourselves more clearly. Good stories well-told capture the attention and interest of students, and students then learn about the world and themselves through their reactions to what happens in these stories. Aesop knew the educational power of stories over 2000 years ago in ancient Greece. Stories work just as well in classrooms today, and great teachers use stories to great effect.
9. Awareness of Students’ Culture
The ninth quality that great teachers possess is an intimate working knowledge of the fundamental nature of the students they are teaching. By this, I mean that if you are teaching 6-year-olds, you must have expert knowledge of how 6-year-old children think (what they are and are not capable of cognitively); how they generally react to adults in authority as well as their peers; what motivates them; and the like. Great Grade 1 teachers are also very aware of what is going on in the “sub-culture” of 6-year-olds at any given time. I recently watched a movie called “Captain Underpants” with my Grade 1 grandson because I wanted to learn more about Grade 1 culture so I could be more up-to-date in teaching this to my pre-service elementary teachers. Great teachers are diligent in learning about what movies, TV shows, music, video games, and apps that the kids they teach are interested in. And they use this knowledge effectively in their teaching.
The same strategies apply to teaching students who are 13-years-old or 18-years-old. For example, great teachers understand that peer influence increases significantly with age, and they take things like this into account as they work with older students. Knowing the general nature of students as a group at the grade level you teach is essential to great teaching. Delving deeper and getting to know your students as individuals is also essential. Without this kind of in-depth understanding, you simply cannot maximize your effectiveness as a teacher.
10. Negotiation
Tenth (and one of the most important qualities), is great teachers are masterful at persuasion and negotiation. I once saw a documentary about a man who trained animals for movies. This individual was famous for the effectiveness of his work, and the documentary showed the techniques he used to train birds, dogs, cats, and a very large tiger. The interviewer asked the trainer, “What do you do when the tiger doesn’t do what you want?” The trainer smiled and replied, “Well, sometimes I get what I want, and sometimes the tiger gets what she wants.” I have found that classrooms work like that—especially as students get older and develop more ideas and opinions of their own. Any teacher who thinks junior high or high school students ought to “do what they’re told because I’m the teacher!” is in for a challenging year. There is a great deal of negotiation that goes on in a successful classroom—sometimes with the class as a whole, often on a student-by-student basis. Great teachers are a bit like the animal trainer; they understand that in classrooms today, sometimes the teachers get what they want, and sometimes the students get what they want.
Part of being a great negotiator is being an effective influencer. Great teachers want their students to succeed, and they have developed an abundance of strategies that nudge students to succeed academically and behave appropriately. In The Tactical Teacher: Proven Strategies That Positively Influence Student Learning and Classroom Behavior,3 I describe in detail how great teachers use strategies such as reciprocation, likeability, the power of starting with small commitments, appealing to emotion before appealing to reason, making the invisible visible, and how and when to effectively use different types of rewards. I have studied and practised these influence strategies in some of the toughest schools in Alberta, and they have almost always helped me to change some of the most negative and belligerent students into students who cared about school and who were ultimately successful in their school endeavours.
Ultimately, perhaps the greatness of any teacher is found in the things they give to their students that stand the test of time—the skills, the life lessons, and the values their students take from the classroom and carry with them throughout their lives 80, 90, or even 100 years into the future. Perhaps that is the ultimate measure of how good or great any of us are as teachers.
I am hopeful that many of you who are reading this list will nod your head in agreement with most of the qualities I have articulated. I am equally sure that some of you will say, “Hey, what about (insert missing quality here).” And that’s okay, because if you don’t like my list, I invite you to make one of your own, then try and live up to the qualities on your list. I am confident that both you and your students will benefit greatly from your efforts.
References
1 Hanushek, E. (2010). The Difference is Great Teachers. In Waiting for Superman: How We Can Save America’s Failing Public Schools – A Participant Guide. New York: Participant Media, p. 84. Retrieved from https://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Hanushek%20 2010%20Superman.pdf
2 Teaching the Teachers. (June 11, 2016, The Economist). Retrieved from http://www.economist. com/news/briefing/21700385-great-teaching-has-long-been-seen-innate-skill-reformers-are-showing-best
3 Ripley, D. (2022). The Tactical Teacher: Proven Strategies That Positively Influence Student Learning and Classroom Behavior. Bloomington: Solution Tree Press (publication in process, available January, 2022).
Dale Ripley
Dale Ripley, PhD, is currently teaching in the Departments of Elementary and Secondary Education at the University of Alberta. He has over 35 years of teaching experience at the elementary, junior high/middle school, high school, college and university levels. Additionally, he has served as a principal at the elementary and secondary school levels, as well as serving as superintendent for both rural and urban school districts. While Dale has worked in schools that were located in affluent areas and were high-performing, his first love has always been working in schools where many of the students were considered “at-risk” or “challenging.” He, therefore, chose to spend most of his teaching career working in inner-city or so-called “high needs” schools.
This article is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Winter 2022 issue.