As a former administrator, part of my job was to interview potential teaching candidates. Once teachers made it through the application review process and were called in for an interview, there were several questions and statements that were posed to them. I used one particular statement to gain insight into a teacher’s “classroom personality.”  The statement was:  Rank the following three words in order of importance for a successful classroom; explain your thinking: discipline, planning, and enthusiasm.

Here are my rankings and explanations:

1. Discipline – It doesn’t matter how enthusiastic you are or how much you’ve planned, if you don’t have an orderly disciplined classroom not much will get done by you or the students.
2. Planning – You must use data to plan for your students. If you don’t know where they are, how can you move them academically to where they need to be?
3. Enthusiasm – If your students are well managed and they have lessons and activities that are planned for them specifically, you can be enthusiastic about the success in your room (both yours and your students’.)

I’m sure there are successful teachers out there who would rank these traits differently for a variety of reasons. I would love to hear from you! If you are a teacher or not, give it some thought; how would you respond to that statement?