Faculty physician teachers play a primary role in ensuring that surgical trainees achieve the best possible education during residency training. One critical component of this teaching comes from the time spent with surgical trainees in the operating room (OR). Operative room teaching is commonly broken down into teaching in preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative phases. To ensure that the time spent in the OR is maximized for learning, these aspects of teaching need to be structured effectively. We will discuss how a faculty physician can best approach these individual components of operative teaching.