Teacher dispositions, attitudes, and motivation play important roles in educating students so that they are highly successful in school. This is particularly true for students in borderland areas who frequently need to negotiate two cultures, two languages, and two worlds. Using grounded theory with extant data from Tijuana and San Diego-area teachers who participated in a border pedagogy training institute, characteristics that are critical to teacher dispositions--which can make significant differences in effectiveness with students in the borderlands--have been identified.