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I just finished watching the Super Bowl where physically impressive men pounded on each other for the right to be called football champions. On either side of the field there were about a hundred guys each earning at least six figure incomes, if not millions. At the same time, there were teachers all around the country preparing for an early start to another week of guiding and forming the minds that will one day decide the direction of our country and our world. Very few of them will earn six figure incomes. Teaching is perhaps the most underrated and undervalued profession in our society. Nursing may run a close second, but at least in most cases, nurse's patients realize at the time what a great service they are receiving. For teachers, there is often a delay of years before those that they are helping realize what a great job their teachers have done.

It takes a lot of energy to be a teacher; it takes a special person to be a great teacher. As a student in both inner-city public and prestigious private schools as well as a substitute teacher and even a corporate trainer, I have had the opportunity to observe some great teachers at work and believe they share a few attributes in common.

PASSION

Great teachers have a passion for their profession as if what they do is more of a mission than a job. There are a lot of administrative hurdles, budget restrictions and curriculum guideline challenges that make a teacher's job tough before they even step in front of a class to begin teaching. A good teacher needs to be armed with a passion for what they have chosen to do in order to handle all of these obstacles and still have the mental and emotional energy to be effective in front of their students.

LOVE OF LEARNING

Closely related to a passion for teaching, having a love for learning themselves is a very important trait of good teacher. There is nothing more energizing for a student than having a teacher who demonstrates that they are still willing to learn themselves. It is a rare person who can completely answer off the top of their head every question that a student asks them. Rather than ignoring a question or pushing it aside when they don't know the complete answer, a good teacher will engage the student by showing them that they are genuinely interested in discovering new answers themselves.

EMPATHY

A good teacher feels for his or her students, striving to understand not only where the students are, but also where they come from. In order to present material

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