Your lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to debate which three characteristics are the ingredients for a great teacher. The special agents assigned to help you with this task are Nick Zaveri, Christopher Tudisco, Jack Scanlan, William Mealey & Aviva Levin.

Prior to Edupodlooza 2022, teachers on Twitter responded to the question of what top three traits they though made a great teacher, which led to some interesting and contradicting responses! Thus, this episode involves the five participants reacting to that thread (which you can find here).

Our conversation included discussions about:

• “Presence, attentiveness, and having a sense of humor” (@JasonAblin) versus “stoicism, pragmatism, perspicacity” (@Dr_Ezad)

• What level of vocabulary is appropriate for use with students?

• Should teachers be “with-it”?

• Can you teach teachers how to have a sense of humor?

• How important is a deep knowledge of content?

• Is teacher vulnerability in the classroom only available to cis, straight, white males?

• The group workshopping a question that Mealey had about how he mediated a conflict between two students

• Should teachers say that they “love” students? How do we define “love” for students?

 Special Agents:

• Agent Aviva Levin of Lesson: Impossible  (Twitter)

• Agent Jack Scanlan of EduChaos (Twitter)

• Agent Nick Zaveri of Can We Please Talk? (Twitter)

• Agents Mealey and Tudisco of Unprofessional Development (Twitter)