On the basis of my own experience of teaching students from about 30 countries for almost 30 years, I've identified three character traits that make my teaching experience both enjoyable and meaningful. They are intellectual curiosity, intellectual humility, and a sense of humor.
Curiosity is the minimal requirement without which not only I but also my students suffer in our "project" of learning and growing together. The problem becomes worse when the course in question is an obligatory one. Not all students are curious enough to study it though some of them seem curious to know why it is obligatory. ;-)
The importance of curiosity isn't restricted to the classroom because curiosity generally leads to learning, which in turn generally leads to growth. On the other hand, a lack of curiosity can easily lead to apathy, which some spiritual sages explain is worse than such negative character traits as anger and hatred because it lacks vitality.
But curiosity can run out of control if left alone. I've learned that the most reliable bumper is humility because it can turn the unknown ("I don't know that I don't know") into the known unknown ("I know that I don't know").
When I still taught at an Israeli university, I was blessed with many intellectually curious students, but some of them were also "blessed" with a lack of intellectual humility. At least in this specific context, I noticed one unfortunate tendency: the more intellectually curious students are, the less humble some of them can be. Of course, this doesn't mean that curiosity is the direct cause of a lack of humility.
I don't know if this tendency is specific to Israeli academia or is universally human, but it doesn't have to be this way. A healthy balance between curiosity and humility is required to maximize our learning and resulting growth.
Humility tells us that our human intellect is limited and can't fully understand everything. My limited intellect can only imagine that there must be more things we can't understand than those we can. ;-) Therefore, humility must also tell us that we don't have to be obsessed with knowing everything about everything and everyone.
Let me conclude this short essay of mine with the following prayer I've made to illustrate this healthy balance between curiosity and humility, in the spirit of the famous Serenity Prayer.
God, grant me the curiosity to know the things I can know, the humility to know that I cannot know everything, and the wisdom to know the difference.