What makes good [E-]teachers?

I have sat with this concept often in my career, what makes Great teachers?  I have to admit a prejudice in my answer.  I believe the answer is Great teachers are born not made.

Born teachers possess several characteristics :

1. they enjoy learning
2. they have a servant attitude
3. they can deconstruct complex information

 However, not all born teacher's are in the teaching profession, and not all teaching professionals are born teachers.  Just as many talented musicians never play anywhere but their garage, and not everyone in the music biz is really all that talented.

So what do you do if you weren't born for this?  If teaching is not as natural as breathing?  Or if it was, but you've experienced a set-back, burn out, or other loss of teaching hootspa?

Short of finding another profession my answer is find mentors.  Mentors can be face to face colleagues, online colleagues or authors, or bloggers, or anyone who is willing to share what works for them.  Find them, seek them out.  Mentors can be formal, as is suggested in many teacher development programs, or informal.

The next step to getting better is finding the nuggets of gold in what each mentor has to offer.  Distill what they are offering and try to find 2 things from each minimum which are useful to you.  Take them for a test run, and keep only what works for you and your students.

If you can find three nuggets a year to add to your teaching bag of tricks, then you are doing well.

E teaching is not different in this respect, but finding online mentors can be more challenging if your school does not offer great professional development.  So how do you find those people in the isolated work from home world?

1. iNacol This is the professional organization that all e teachers should reach out to for professional growth.
2. your lms provider.  Most LMS's offer webinars and growth opportunities.
3. your faculty-even if your school isn't organizing you it is perfectly ok to reach out and contact other online faculty to see who is doing what.
4. never underestimate the power of a good search engine.  by finding blogs and other online teacher venues you can not only read what they have, but email and interact with the authors.