What Makes a Great Teacher?

Last year, Katrina Fried, published the award-winning Everyday Heroes: 50 American Changing the World One Nonprofit at a Time. This year she turned her focus to the heroes in the front lines of the classroom: teachers. Her new book, American Teacher: Heroes in the Classroom, opens with the the famous William Butler Yeats quotation about education: “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” Indeed, as every great teacher knows, being an educator requires passion; moreover, teaching is just a profession — it is a calling. Fried interviewed and photographed 50 exceptional teachers and their students throughout the country. There is an enormous diversity in the teachers she interviewed —  in terms of experience (2-52 years), socioeconomic conditions (low-income to affluent communities), and type of administration (public and charter schools). Despite their differences, these teachers all had one thing in common: students that were happy, learning and flourishing. In interviews with hundreds of teachers, Fried, also recognized common effective pedagogical strategies. Bookshelf honors great teachers in America and around the world who have dedicated their lives, many times making enormous sacrifices, to shape future generations by presenting Fried’s “12 Rules for Being a True Classroom Hero”; may they inspire and sustain the world’s greatest heroes:

1. Rules are made to be broken.
2. All for one, and one for all.
3. Bring your passions into the classroom.
4. Never teach to the test.
5. Keep it real.
6. There is no such thing as an un-teachable child.
7. Necessity is the mother of all invention.
8. Produce good people, not just good students.
9. The future is now.
10. Be the person you want your students to become.
11. You cannot do it alone.
12. Be a student of your students.

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For further reading: American Teacher: Heroes in the Classroom by Katrina Fried, Welcome Books (2013)