What to Look for in Teachers?

Good teachers are key to school success. Students spend most of their time with the teachers in the classroom. There are studies that show the detrimental impact of having a bad teacher on students. In the mean time, we all remember that good teacher who had a life long influence on us. 

Effective principals know this as a fact and spend a lot of time in selecting the best teachers possible. It also takes a seasoned principal to identify good teachers and those candidates with potential to be a good teacher. What should a principal look for in a teacher? Here is a list of characteristics that good teachers have in common based on research. McREL researcher Bryan Goodwin identifies them in a 2010 Educational Leadership article.

Effective Principal

“Producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect: impressive, striking: ready for service or action: actual: being in effect: operative. This is how Merriam- Webster defines the highly-sought adjective in today’s world, “effective.” Another dictionary defines it as “adequate to accomplish a purpose; producing the intended or expected result.” However, when this mighty adjective is put before “principal” or “school leader” it encompasses more than its explicit meaning in the dictionary.  

“The intended or expected results” of business is to make money. Neither business nor leaders of such business would be called effective if there is no profit involved. One would not call his/her car “an effective way of transportation” if it is not moving, hence not serving its intended or expected result.

School Culture Begins with Staff: A Great Tool for School Leaders

In the summer of 2000, I was cruising down the tortuous Old Pacific Highway 101 with three of my ninth grade students. It was a road trip that I had organized when I was teaching in a charter school in Cleveland, Ohio. I, along with three of my students, drove from Cleveland to California. It took us two weeks and 7,500 miles back and forth where we saw many “see before you die” type of places, had great fun, and came back with unforgettable memories. My students who are now successful college graduates and professionals still talk about the trip.

When I, once, was bragging about our trip to a traditional public school teacher he responded that he “would not take [his students] across the street, yet I took [my students] to California” with such amazement.  Now, I think about his response that is reminds me of another response that I got from one of my teachers when I was a charter school principal years later. When requested to do home visits to her students, this teacher responded to me that she “did not feel safe going to the neighborhood that our students lived in.”