I was terrified the first question on my AP Calculus exam would be “What is calculus?” I could do any problem they threw my way, so teachers labeled me “good at math,” but I had no idea why I performed those steps or why they worked. For me, teaching philosophy was the same. By 2021, I’d won a few awards for excellence in teaching. I knew I was good in a classroom. I also knew—the same way I knew it in calculus—that deep down, I had no idea what I was doing. Luck and likability had a lot more to do with my evaluation scores than I cared to admit. I began to wonder about the systems that had made it possible for me to be a “good teacher” the same way I had been “good at math” many years ago. Institutes of higher education exist to teach, yet teaching training is frequently missing at worst or an afterthought at best; where it is available, it is often too broad to be useful or so specialized as to be inaccessible. Moreover, many institutional incentive structures make investing in teaching a bad use of professional time and money. In this talk, I’ll discuss what I see as the structural challenges to developing innovative, impactful teaching, and how we—both as individuals and collectively—can address those challenges to ensure that both students and their teachers enjoy the benefits of genuine excellence in teaching.