In this day and age, there seems to be near limitless ideas for how to become a good teacher. There are innumerable books, articles, and even social media shorts to consider. Many of these sources espouse how to be entertaining and relatable to students and miss the mark. While charisma and quick wit might earn short-term approval or engagement, these superficial short-cuts do not equip the teacher to develop meaningful relationships with their students. While discussing these “good teachers”, likely one or two come immediately to mind for each of us. They likely had a profound impact on our development yet defining what exactly makes a teacher “good” can be surprisingly difficult.
Before exploring this definition, it is important to clarify the role of a teacher. In a time where many children lack virtuous role models, a stable home life, and/or have lagging developmental skills, it is tempting for teachers to overextend themselves and find themselves striving to meet every student need. They feel pressured to fill the role of parent, friend, and counselor. And early on in my own teaching career, I found myself in this predicament. These self-imposed expectations carry emotional weight, and I soon realized those expectations were neither fair to myself nor helpful to my students. A teacher has their own distinct purpose and should never be a surrogate or stand-in for something else. Their guidance and wisdom will serve as a model for their students, but not a replacement for those other relationships in their lives.
The first step to achieving good teacher status is simple – teachers must delight in learning themselves. This love of learning leads to another foundational element of good teaching: knowing and loving the content while demonstrating a commitment to growth in the craft of teaching. Without these essential elements, students will never see their teacher as someone they can trust or learn from.
Next, a good teacher must be intentional about their classroom culture. A good teacher must create conditions where students can thrive through ordered spaces, high expectations, and a balance of joy and wonder. An ethos of curiosity and virtue needs to be carefully cultivated.
Teachers must also love the children they serve – not in a familial way but as their teacher. If a teacher loves their content, loves to learn, and loves to have order and joy, but doesn’t love children, they will surely fail. Children make mistakes and a good teacher will always remember that the work they are doing is aspirational. A good teacher will honor the inherent dignity of each student and respond to student mistakes with discernment. Formation is part of the human experience, and the teacher can promote justice, courage, and community as part of each students’ journey.
Teaching is not only about the conditions and habits of the classroom. A good teacher must also have purposeful instruction. Purposeful instruction begins with planning lessons that have a goal and a path to get there. A good teacher knows their content and can plan questions that allow students to carry the weight of learning. This fosters high engagement and yields higher outcomes. While the focus may be on students understanding the content, a good teacher also looks deeper into what academic and intellectual habits or skills the students can learn through the content, activity, or text. And finally, a good teacher ensures that their students have learned the material through frequently assessing, both formally and informally, and using that data to move through the next steps on their learning journey.
In a recent visit to a Great Hearts school, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a Humane Letters class discussing the work of teachers by reading Plato’s Meno. The students were quick to assert that a good teacher simply brings something out of their students – both in character and in discovery. From our own experiences, and those of our students, it’s clear that good teachers are easy to recognize. We have an innate sense of what “good” means, and by consistently modeling this for our students, we help instill those noble virtues in them and in ourselves.
This vision of the good teacher is nothing new, though it often sounds revolutionary. We can look to Plato who described the teacher as a midwife of the soul, or someone who helps students give birth to understanding through dialogue, reflection, and intellectual struggle. Socrates embodied this through persistent questioning that led students out of ignorance and toward Truth. Aristotle emphasized that education is about forming virtue, not just transferring knowledge and that the teacher is a moral exemplar who helps students become good and to live well. This classical understanding continues to find expression in modern voices. Mortimer Adler, Charlotte Mason, and Josef Pieper all reinforce the idea that true education is about the cultivation of the mind and heart.
To be a good teacher is to embody an ethos of wonder and joy, a love of learning, an ability to prepare, plan, instruct, and assess well, and a deep commitment to the habits and affections that are taught through each subject they encounter. A good teacher is not perfect. Good teachers are principled. A good teacher stands firm in the role they are uniquely called to play: that of forming minds, cultivating wonder, nurturing discipline, and pointing students toward what is True, Good, and Beautiful. Progress in this type of work can be slow and often goes unnoticed. It cannot be measured in viral videos or glowing evaluations, but in the gradual formation of people who learn to think clearly, love deeply, and live well and who strive to bring Truth and Beauty to the rest of their classroom, community, and the world.
