What Makes a Master Teacher?
Developed at Selwyn House – 2013
Connects with each student…relationships…knows the kids, learns their passions, helps them find ways to engage in their learning.
Teaches the students first, then the curriculum.
Makes the curriculum relevant to the student's life.
Believes in lifelong learning and the possibility of their own personal growth and learning every day.
Focuses on learning goals as opposed to performance goals...effort versus achievement...growth versus inertia.
Embodies character education and is a model of respect, warmth, integrity, concern for others.
Passionate and, therefore, knowledgeable about the content/subjects they teach. • Master teacher, team player, and leader of the school...always concerned about the impact on school culture not just their classroom.
Possesses and models strong communication skills.
Confident in themselves and confident in others.
Understands and enjoys boys and knows how to set limits with respect and acceptance of boys.
Enthusiastic and passionate about life...theirs, their colleagues’, their students’.
Contributes to a growth-oriented faculty culture.
Supports the school mission.
When a student does not succeed or understand, a master teacher tries and tries again.
Twenty-Five Factors Great Teachers Have in Common
(by Patrick F. Bassett, President of NAIS)
Love kids and mentor them.
Know how kids think and what motivates them to think.
Exude irrepressible enthusiasm for the subjects they teach, but teach students rather than subjects.
Advocate for their students, especially when they alone see virtue and talent hidden in a student.
Empathize with the most vulnerable students, and provide a safe harbor for any student caught in a personal storm.
Demonstrate high academic intelligence (IQ) through their intellectual curiosity and thoroughness; and demonstrate emotional intelligence (EQ) through their empathy, social judgment, and sensitive approach to difficult conversations.
Experiment with teaching and the emerging technologies that support it, relishing being the “fast horses” out of the gate in an effort to innovate in ways that improve their teaching and their students’ learning.
Become “first followers” of other teachers with good ideas.
Seek to stay current with the research in the field, especially as it relates to the age group they teach.
Adjust to the needs and abilities of kids, rather than expect all kids to squeeze into the same learning mold.
Network with other teachers and scholars in their school. Local community, and (increasingly) the digital community.
Collaborate with and support their colleagues, and demonstrate deep concern for the culture of the school.
Assess skills on a flexible and individualized scale more so than content on a fixed scale.
Model the skills and values a 21st-century school would seek as student outcomes: character, creativity, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and cosmopolitanism (cross-cultural competency).
Create appositive, intentional, achievement-oriented culture in their classroom rooted in an ethos of fairness and nurtured by the belief that every student can succeed.
Seek to find and leverage each student’s strengths rather than dwell on any student’s deficiencies.
Support school leadership, including taking initiative in solving problems rather than in creating them.
See their students’ academic failure as partly their own and work to reverse it.
Show interest in their students beyond their academics, attending their games and concerts and exhibits.
Love life, and show it.
Find a way to reveal their souls and the ethical frames by which they think, when appropriate, in the “teachable moments” that present themselves in school settings.
Love learning and model the growth mindset they imbue in their students.
Embrace diversity and manifest cross-cultural competency, approaching differences with curiosity rather than judgment.
Find ways, despite the lack of positional power to “lead from the middle”.
Send “a postcard of the destination,” as Chip and Dan Heath put it in their book Switch, so students are clear about where they are going and how to get there.
