A good friend and seasoned teacher once told me that the art of teaching is not about conveying knowledge. There is no “x” amount of material to transport from one mind to another and teaching in that way is not only misguided—it can be miserable for both student and the teacher. Instead, a more honest metric is whether a teacher can get a student to share in the excitement and attachment towards a subject that inspired the teacher to teach it in the first place.

Put another way, a good teacher is one who helps a student fall in love with a subject and pursue it to their hearts’ content, just like they once did.