10 qualities of a good teacher

Teachers can have a lasting effect on our success later in life.

We asked Heather Hill, the Hazen-Nicoli Professor in Teacher Learning and Practice at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, what skills a good teacher possesses.

Most scholars would say that a good teacher does three key things: They establish strong, caring teacher-student relationships; challenge students to think, reason, and communicate their ideas; and convey subject matter accurately and clearly.

Good teachers have strong knowledge of their students as individuals — how they think and think about themselves as learners — as well as of their students’ culture and community.

They not only understand the subject matter they teach; they understand it in ways that are particular to their work in a classroom.

For instance, they know how to coordinate different definitions of fractions (as a part of a single whole object, as part of a set of objects, and as a point on number line) in ways that help the

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