This fall 8 “All-Star” teachers will come together to help launch The Equity Project, a charter middle school in Washington Heights.  Lured by $125,000 salaries and an innovative new school, these teachers will test the hypothesis that superb teachers make a great school.  The All-Star faculty includes two Ivy League graduates, an accomplished violinist and Joe Carbone- the gym teacher- who spent four years as head strength and conditioning coach for the Los Angeles Lakers.  In last week’s New York Times, the school’s founder, Zeke Vanderhoek, a 32 year-old Yale graduate sites three common traits between the All-Star teachers.  If the students at The Equity Project perform as high as expected, these traits could form a new hiring rubric:

1- High ‘engagement factor’- a given time frame during which students seem so focused that they almost forget they are in class

2- Expertise in redirecting potential troublemakers

3- Contagious enthusiasm