Ten Traits of

__________________________Highly Effective Teachers

Personal Traits that Indicate Character: What a Teacher Is
Trait 1: Mission-Driven and Passionate
The effective teacher is mission-driven, feeling a call to teach as well as a passion to help students learn and grow.
Trait 2: Positive and Real
The highly effective teacher is positive and real, demonstrating the qualities of caring, empathy, respect, and fairness
in relationships with students, parents, and colleagues.
Trait 3: A Teacher-Leader
The highly effective teacher is a teacher-leader who positively affects the lives of students, parents and colleagues.

Teaching Traits That Get Results: What the Effective Teacher Does
Trait 4: With-It-Ness
The highly effective teacher demonstrates with-it-ness: the state of being on top of it, tuned in to, aware of, and in
complete control of three critical facets of classroom life:

The management and organization of the classroom

The engagement of students
The management of time

Trait 5: Style
The effective teacher exhibits his or her own unique style, bringing drama, enthusiasm, liveliness, humor, charisma,
creativity, and novelty to his or her teaching.
Trait 6: Motivational Expertise
The highly effective teacher is a motivator par excellence who believes in his or her own ability to make a difference
in the lives of students and relentlessly presses and pursues students to maintain the highest possible behavioral and
academic standards.
Trait 7: Instructional Effectiveness
The highly effective teacher is an instructional virtuoso: a skilled communicator with a repertoire of essential
abilities, behaviors, models, and principles that lead all students to learning.

SOURCE: Elaine McEwan, 10 Traits of Highly Effective Teachers:

How to Hire, Coach and Mentor Successful Teachers. Corwin Press, 2002.

N. Colflesh, Ph.D., Colflesh & Assoc.,

ncolflesh@aol.com

Intellectual Traits that Demonstrate Knowledge, Curiosity, and Awareness: What and
How an Effective Teacher Thinks
Trait 8: Book Learning
The highly effective teacher has a sound knowledge of content (the structure of the discipline) and outcomes (what
the school, district, or state has determined is essential for students to know).
Trait 9: Street Smarts
The highly effective teacher has knowledge of the students, the school, and the community in which he or she is
teaching and uses this knowledge to solve problems in the instructional setting.
Trait 10: A Mental Life
The highly effective teacher has a substantive thought life that includes the abilities to be the following:

Metacognitive: able to read ones own mental state and then assess how the state will affect ones present
and future performance
Strategic: able to think aloud and model strategic learning for students
Reflective: able to think about personal teaching behaviors for the purposes of self-growth
Communicative: able to articulate ideas, issues, beliefs, and values about the act of teaching with
colleagues, students, and parents
Responsive: able to flex to the changing needs and demands of the profession

SOURCE: Elaine McEwan, 10 Traits of Highly Effective Teachers:

How to Hire, Coach and Mentor Successful Teachers. Corwin Press, 2002.

N. Colflesh, Ph.D., Colflesh & Assoc.,

ncolflesh@aol.com