It’s a ridiculous question, one that has been asked for generations, and still asked today: Are great teachers born or made?

Reams of research papers and piles of books have dealt with this question, and the answer over and over again is the same: Teachers, like people in every profession, are born. But great teachers are chiseled to their greatness through the fiery furnace of tenacity, toil and tears.

A whimsical smile spread across my face when I read the headline on The Atlantic website: “Are great teachers born or made?”

I knew from the beginning the anti-climatic ending.

As outstanding athletes and gifted musicians are created through dedicated training and demanding practice, so are great teachers.

While there are some genetic or God-given traits in rare specimens in all walks of life, by and large, it’s hard work, undeterred ambition and abiding love of learning and sharing knowledge that makes some teachers better than others.

“Effective teachers are made over time, through education, perseverance, practice and guidance,” wrote Seattle Education Association President Jonathan Knapp in the Seattle Times. “Newly minted teachers may be shiny and bright, but teachers with experience connect with students. They are the coin of the realm for student achievement. It takes time to get from here to there.”

It’s an unfortunate reality that teaching is one of the professions where too many people think that’s it so easy that anyone with half a brain could do it.

Most of us don’t think just anyone off the street could whip out a scalpel and perform delicate brain surgery, or put on a blue suit and woo jurors in the courtroom or pull out a calculator and spin numbers like an accountant.

Those professions, like many others, require a great deal of training, knowledge and skill before we pay them money for their services.

People, nevertheless, would argue that great teachers are born, not made.

Perhaps people imagine teaching is easy because in general we’ve all been to school and seen what a teacher does during the day.

A good teacher makes teaching look so effortless that you think to yourself, “Hey, I could do this,” while a bad teacher makes you think, “Hey, I could do this better!”

I know from experience.

My first few days of teaching, I felt like the little boy with his finger in the dike. As soon as I plugged one hole, another one would appear.

There were moments during those early days when keeping a classroom full of energy and combustion seemed like an attempt to harness electricity.

At any moment the entire lesson could come crashing down (and yes, on occasions lessons did flop like an imploding building).

On the outside you try to remain cool, calm and collected, but on the inside you’re about to toss your breakfast, realizing that a few missteps will lead to classroom chaos in even the most well-behaved classes.

Eventually, my training and skills kicked in and activities and lessons that would have caused chaos in my first week went by without a hitch.

But in every lesson, there was something new for me to work at and make better, or something I needed to do differently and more creatively.

I managed to pull things together and remove my proverbial finger from the dike, and instead of a rush of water only a few trickles dropped from the holes.

Each day I became a teaching moment and a learning experience for both my students and me. I never thought I was born to teach. I knew that to become a good teacher, like becoming a good leader, lawyer or bricklayer, meant putting in hours of hard work, brick by brick, one day at a time.

Find out more about great teachers in The Atlantic.

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