Passion

I remember when I was in Physics one time and we got our teacher sidetracked (very easily done by the way) but anyways he began teaching us college and research level physics, but in a way that made it easy to understand. His passion for this subject was so much clearer than that of what we simply were learning from the textbook. His passion for teaching made all the students in the class more excited about learning and made the classroom a much more productive place.

Authenticity

To me, when you don't feel like yourself, like you are putting on an act, you are no longer being authentic. I think students can very easily see right through this act of faking authenticity. All it takes is one or two questions that aren't really known, but made up, for a student to see very clearly that the teacher really does not know what is going on. When a teacher is not being authentic, it is very easy for the students to follow in this act as well. Most commonly I believe when a teacher tries to put on an act to answer "why are we learning this?" It is very easy for the students to lose focus, because if the teacher obviously doesn't know why they are learning it, why should they?

Compassion

Through the compassion of two of my teachers from High School I was able to pursue a project that I was very interested in. I came up with the idea of replicating an experiment done by some researchers at UCLA, making an x-ray machine. The physics teacher at my school, along with the shop teacher, showed an understanding of what I was trying to do, and in my mind, showed me compassion. They helped me with my machine through the whole process. They were always available for questioning and I was never afraid to go to the them when I needed help. This compassion was very important for not just the success of the machine but my own self esteem when I thought I would not be able to succeed.