Timothy, you have already overcome a huge hurdle which is self-reflection and acceptance of what you need to work on to go from a good instructor to a great instructor. In my experience of training instructors and other professionals which spans over 15 years now, I have found the hardest part is the self-realization that a change is needed. Being a great instructor is no different than being a great leader in any industry. The greatest leaders are able to reach their stakeholders in multiple dimensions including instructional leadership, inspirational leadership and spiritual leadership. There are successful leaders that can focus on just one of these areas but tend to falter at some point in their career. What I teach to my leaders going forth is to always focus on all areas of leadership. The instructional leader is great at providing instructions and telling others what they need to do. Problem with this as the only style of leadership is the leader always needs to be present to ensure things are getting done. You will often hear of the relationship between managers and leaders and this is one large area that tends to take leaders into that manager category, they only know how to instruct others. Inspirational leadership is more motivational and inspires stakeholders to follow the leader and idolize the leader. This style can be incredibly powerful but can also be harmful if the leader is not focused on the overall good of all stakeholders. The spiritual leader has follows based on faith and not just in a religious sense but faith of being a person worthy of following. By focusing on always being a complete leader; instructional, inspirational, and spiritual, you as an instructor can have great value to your students. A couple of cliché’s that comes up but are very useful include “be fair but firm”, and “lead by example”. It is OK to challenge your students. If your own child was habitually late, or disrupted class or was misbehaving in other ways, would you not take notice and do what you could to provide leadership to your own child? Why should it be different for any of your students? You are preparing them for life as a professional beyond their subject matter area. Leading by example is perhaps one of the most misunderstood areas of teaching. If your students do not see you following your own rules and policies, why should they feel responsible to follow them? The “do what I say and not as I do” type of instructors tend to have limited success over the lifetime of students they service and this is from 15 years of observation. Well, I have gotten incredibly long winded here but wanted to provide you with this information and encourage you to move forward. You seem to have a great focus and direction and please let me know if there is ever anything I can do to assist you. You are welcome to connect with me professionally on my LinkedIn page and this is totally optional. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesajacksonjr Kindest regards, James