Qualities of Great Teachers: What a Director Principal Looks For When Hiring

You have sat across the table from a principal and wondered what they were really listening for. Maybe you had fewer years on your CV than the other candidates. Maybe you had plenty of years and still did not get the call. Either way, you walked out asking the same question: what do school leaders actually want?

Alpana Baveja has an answer, and it is not the one most teachers expect. She is the Director Principal of GD Goenka Signature School in Gurugram. She started teaching at 18, by accident, as a temporary substitute. She became a principal at 33, leading teachers who were twenty years older than her. Today she hires teachers herself, and she does not start with the number of years on a resume.

She starts with passion. Then grit. Then humility and a genuine appetite to learn.

This article walks through her journey and the thinking behind her hiring decisions, so you can understand the qualities of great teachers from the person making the call. Along the way, you will find practical ways to show those qualities in your classroom, your staffroom and your next interview.

From Substitute Teacher to Director Principal: An Accidental Journey

In a conversation with Rishabh on Suraasa's Inspiring Educators podcast, Alpana Baveja describes how she arrived in teaching. Her aunt ran a school, a teacher left, and a temporary vacancy needed filling. Baveja was 18. She took the job for pocket money.

It did not stay a pocket-money job for long. Within a month, she says, two things happened. She developed a deep respect for teachers, because she now saw from the inside how much the work demands. And she discovered that she genuinely loved working with children.

Many teachers will recognise some version of this story. Not every great educator arrives with a ten-year plan. Some fall into the profession through a family connection, a gap year, a career switch or a friend who needed cover for a term. What matters is what happens after the first month: whether the work pulls you in.

Watch Alpana Baveja tell this story in her own words, and hear how her accidental start shaped the way she now hires and leads teachers:

Her story also explains why she reads CVs differently. When you begin as a substitute with no formal plan, you learn quickly that credentials alone do not make someone good in a room full of children. Character does. Early in the conversation, she points to the research she trusts on this:

"Angela has rightly written in her book Grit, she says that passion and perseverance is more important than talent." (Alpana Baveja)

She is referring to psychologist Angela Duckworth, whose work on grit studies why some people sustain effort toward long-term goals while others give up. You can read more about that research on Angela Duckworth's official site. For a teacher, the idea is reassuring. Your starting point does not decide your ceiling. Your persistence does.

Gaining Respect Through Honesty and Vulnerability in the Classroom

One of the most useful moments in Baveja's story comes from her early years teaching senior grades. She was young, not much older than some of her students. They tested her. One of their favourite moves was to throw difficult vocabulary words at her and wait to see if she knew them.

A nervous new teacher has two options here. Bluff, or be honest.

Baveja chose honesty. She told her students plainly that she was not a walking thesaurus. She did not pretend to know every word. And instead of losing their respect, she earned it, and kept it for the long term.

Why does this work? Because students can spot a bluff faster than most adults. When a teacher pretends to know everything, the class learns that not knowing is shameful. When a teacher says "I don't know that word, let's find out," the class learns that not knowing is the beginning of learning. That is exactly the habit you want your students to carry out of school.

What honest teaching looks like in practice

• Name the gap. "I'm not sure. Give me a moment, or let's look it up together."
• Turn it into a task. Ask a student to find the meaning and explain it to the class at the start of the next lesson.
• Close the loop. Come back to the question. Students remember whether you followed through far more than whether you knew the answer instantly.
• Keep your authority on what matters. Honesty about a vocabulary word does not weaken your command of the lesson objective, the classroom rules or the assessment criteria.

This is also the first quality on Baveja's hiring list showing up early: humility. A teacher who can say "I don't know" in front of thirty teenagers is a teacher who can accept feedback from a head of department. The two behaviours come from the same place.

Leading Across Generations: Overcoming the Age and Experience Divide

At 33, Baveja became a principal. Many of the teachers she now led were 50 and above. Some had been teaching longer than she had been alive in adulthood. That is a difficult room to walk into as the person in charge.

She did not try to win it with authority. She won it with inclusion.

Her approach had three parts. She involved staff actively in decisions rather than announcing them. She refined the school's standard operating procedures together with the teachers, not in isolation. And she changed the way she spoke about the school entirely:

"In my school, I never use 'I', it's 'we'." (Alpana Baveja)

That small change in language does real work. When a leader says "I have decided," experienced teachers hear a younger person asserting rank. When a leader says "we have agreed," they hear that their experience shaped the outcome. Shared ownership turns potential resistance into commitment.

Why this matters to you, even if you are not a principal

You may be the youngest teacher in your department. You may be the new hire with fresh ideas and colleagues who have done things one way for fifteen years. Baveja's approach transfers directly.

Principals notice this. A teacher who can work across generations, who respects experience without being intimidated by it, is a teacher who will one day lead. If you are thinking about that path, our guide on moving from local classrooms to global educator and leadership roles maps out the next steps.

The Golden Rule of Leadership: Public Praise and Private Mentorship

Ask Baveja how she gives feedback and her answer is simple enough to write on a staffroom wall:

"Appreciate in public, but if you have to teach someone something, if you have to guide someone something, if you have to mentor someone something, it should be in person." (Alpana Baveja)

Recognition goes in front of everyone, because it motivates the person and shows the whole team what good work looks like. Correction, guidance and constructive criticism stay one-on-one, because they are about growth, not about an audience.

This sounds obvious. It is surprisingly rare. Many teachers have experienced the opposite: a mistake pointed out in a full staff meeting, an achievement acknowledged quietly in a corridor or not at all. The first breaks trust. The second wastes the chance to build it.

The same rule works in your classroom

Baveja describes this as a leadership practice, but it applies just as well to how you treat students.

• Public: Read out a strong paragraph from a student's essay. Name the effort, not just the score. "Arjun redrafted this three times, and you can see it."
• Private: Have the harder conversation at the desk, after class or in written comments. "This argument loses its thread here. Let's look at why."
• Specific: Vague praise in public and vague criticism in private both fail. Say exactly what worked and exactly what to change.

Feedback that helps people grow is a skill you can build deliberately. Our piece on bridging the gap between professional development and real classroom impact looks at how observation and reflective feedback turn into better teaching.

For hiring, this matters too. When Baveja looks for openness to feedback in a candidate, she is looking for someone who can take private mentoring and act on it. Schools with a strong feedback culture need teachers who see a correction as an investment, not an insult.

How the Teaching Role Has Transformed Over Two Decades

Baveja has watched teaching change for more than two decades. When she started, the dominant model was chalk and talk. The teacher stood at the front, explained, wrote on the board, and students copied. Knowledge flowed one way.

That model has not survived intact. Today, she describes classrooms moving toward flipped, student-centred learning, powered by digital tools and, increasingly, by AI. Students arrive with information already in their pockets. The teacher's value has shifted from holding knowledge to helping students make sense of it.

This shift is not unique to one school in Gurugram. India's National Education Policy 2020 calls for less rote learning and more experiential, inquiry-based and discussion-based teaching. Internationally, the OECD's Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) tracks how teachers' working conditions, practices and professional learning are changing across many countries.

The practical conclusion is clear. The qualities of great teachers twenty years ago are not identical to the qualities principals hire for today. Subject knowledge still matters. But adaptability, comfort with technology and the willingness to keep learning now carry far more weight than they once did.

The 24/7 Teacher: Managing Parent Expectations and Constant Connectivity

Here is something every working teacher knows and few outsiders appreciate. The job no longer ends when the bell rings.

Baveja is direct about this. In earlier decades, teachers worked fixed hours. Now they deal with tech-savvy students, intense parental expectations, growing administrative responsibilities and near-constant accessibility through channels like WhatsApp. A parent can message at 10pm about a test score. A class group can light up on a Sunday.

This pressure is real, and it is worth naming before offering any advice. If you feel stretched thin, you are not imagining it. The role has expanded. Your hours have not officially changed, but your availability has.

Practical boundaries that still respect parents

• Set expectations early. At the first parent meeting of the year, share when you respond to messages. "I reply to messages between 4pm and 6pm on school days." Most parents respect a clear rule more than an unpredictable one.
• Use the right channel for the right message. Quick logistics can go on a group. Concerns about a specific child deserve a call or a meeting, not a text thread.
• Agree on a school-wide approach. Boundaries work best when the whole team shares them. This is exactly where Baveja's "we" leadership helps: the policy belongs to everyone.
• Write calmly, reply later. If a message frustrates you, draft your reply and send it the next morning.

When principals hire, they look for teachers who can handle this pressure without burning out or snapping at families. That is part of what Baveja means by grit. It is not endurance for its own sake. It is the steady professionalism to keep showing up well when the demands keep growing.

Inside a Principal's Hiring Checklist: Why Grit Trumps Tenure

This is the section most teachers want. What does a Director Principal actually look for when you sit down for an interview?

Baveja is clear that she does not focus strictly on candidates with 10 to 15 years of experience. Years matter, but they do not decide. Instead, she looks for a specific set of qualities. And she names the first one without hesitation:

"First thing which I look for in a teacher is passion." (Alpana Baveja)

After passion, her list includes perseverance, humility, openness to feedback and what she describes as unyielding grit. Put together, that is a profile of someone who loves the work, sticks with it, knows they have more to learn and actually wants to learn it.

Why tenure alone is not enough

Fifteen years of experience can mean fifteen years of growth. It can also mean one year repeated fifteen times. A principal cannot tell which from the CV. She has to find out in the conversation.

Meanwhile, a teacher with four years and a visible hunger to improve may adapt faster to a new curriculum, a new technology or a new school culture. In a profession changing as quickly as Baveja describes, that adaptability is valuable.

How each quality shows up in an interview

A worked example

Imagine two answers to the question "Tell me about a challenge in your classroom."

Answer one: "I've taught for twelve years, so I've handled most situations. Classroom management isn't really an issue for me."

Answer two: "Last year I had a Grade 8 group where group work kept falling apart. My first two attempts didn't fix it. My coordinator observed a lesson and suggested assigning clear roles. I tried it, adjusted the roles after a fortnight, and by the end of term the groups were running themselves. I'm still refining how I assess individual contribution."

The first answer leans on tenure. The second shows perseverance, openness to feedback, humility and a learning mindset in under a minute. Based on what Baveja describes, the second candidate is the one she is looking for, regardless of who has more years.

If you want to build the professional learning record that makes answers like this easy, our guide to planning your CPD year explains what counts and how to structure it.

Rethinking Classroom Discipline: Moving Beyond Demands for Silence

Ask many people to picture a well-run classroom, and they picture silence. Rows of children, heads down, no one speaking.

Baveja challenges that picture. Modern classrooms, she says, should not rely on yelling or on demanding absolute silence. Teachers need clear rules. But they also need to recognise that children come to school to socialise and express themselves. Talking is not automatically misbehaviour. Often, it is learning.

This is not a call to abandon structure. It is a call to replace punitive control with empathy and clear expectations.

From control to clarity

Notice how closely this mirrors Baveja's leadership style. Public praise, private correction. Collaborative rules, not imposed ones. The "we" mindset works with children as well as with staff.

For a deeper set of practical techniques, see our guide to classroom management strategies that actually work.

When principals interview, they often ask how you handle disruption. A teacher who answers only with consequences and punishments sounds outdated. A teacher who talks about expectations, routines, relationships and private conversations sounds like someone ready for a modern classroom.

The AI-Enabled Classroom: Flipped Learning and the Teacher as Co-Learner

Many teachers carry a quiet worry: will AI make us unnecessary?

Baveja's answer is a firm no. Machines lack human emotion, she points out, and teaching depends on it. A tool can generate an explanation. It cannot notice that a student has gone quiet this week, or know when a child needs encouragement rather than correction.

What AI will do, in her view, is reshape the classroom. She sees the future in flipped learning. Students take the initiative, researching and exploring content before class. The teacher then acts as a co-learner and guide, helping students analyse what they found, apply it and question it.

What a flipped lesson can look like

1. Before class: Students explore a topic using a short video, a reading or a guided research task, with a few questions to think about.
2. Opening: You check what they found. Where did sources disagree? What confused them?
3. Core of the lesson: Students work on application, analysis and problem-solving while you move around, question and guide.
4. Close: The class reflects on what they now understand and what they still want to know.

This structure fits naturally with inquiry-based planning. The 5E lesson plan model is one practical way to design lessons where students engage and explore before you explain.

The "co-learner" idea connects back to Baveja's own honesty in front of her senior students. A teacher who could admit she was not a walking thesaurus is a teacher who is comfortable learning alongside her class. That comfort becomes essential when students can access as much information as you can, sometimes faster.

This is also why eagerness to learn sits so high on her hiring list. A teacher who refuses to engage with new tools will struggle. A teacher who experiments, evaluates and adapts will thrive. If you want to start, our guide on how artificial intelligence is changing teaching covers what is shifting and what you can do now, and our piece on moving from learning to use AI to AI for learning shows how to put it to work for students. UNESCO's work on artificial intelligence in education is also a useful reference on the human-centred approach Baveja describes.

Elevating the Teaching Profession: Financial Parity and Social Prestige

Baveja ends on a bigger question. Not what makes an individual teacher great, but what it would take for the profession to attract the best people.

Her answer is straightforward. High-achieving university graduates often choose administrative or corporate careers over teaching. To change that, teaching must offer strong financial remuneration and elevated social standing. Respect cannot stay a speech given on Teachers' Day. It has to show up in pay and in how society treats the people who do this work.

She also speaks honestly about who the profession suits today:

The test she offers is simple: if you are creative, if you are passionate, and if you keep happiness above money, teaching is right for you.

Read both ideas together and the picture is clear. Teaching rewards people who love it. And people who love it deserve to be rewarded properly. The two should not be in tension. Too often, they are.

That gap is the status quo Baveja is pushing against. A culture that calls teaching noble while paying it poorly sends a mixed message to every young graduate deciding what to do with their life. Closing it starts with treating teachers as professionals, with professional pay, professional development and professional respect.

For you as an individual teacher, there is a practical side to this too. The skills Baveja hires for, combined with recognised qualifications and a visible record of growth, are what open doors to better-paid roles, leadership positions and international schools. Our comparison of the best teaching certifications for career growth can help you decide which credentials fit where you want to go.

Putting It Together: How to Become the Teacher Principals Want to Hire

Alpana Baveja's journey began with a temporary vacancy and some pocket money. It led to the Director Principal's office. Along the way, she learned what she now looks for in every teacher she hires.

Here is the short version.

• Passion comes first. Show it through specific stories about students and lessons, not through adjectives.
• Grit beats tenure. Years count, but persistence and growth count more.
• Humility earns respect. Admitting what you don't know, to students and to leaders, builds trust.
• Feedback is fuel. Seek private mentoring and act on it. Celebrate others in public.
• Say "we". Shared ownership wins over colleagues of every age.
• Discipline with empathy. Clear rules, not shouted demands for silence.
• Learn alongside your students. AI changes your role. It does not replace it.

None of these qualities require you to have started with a plan. Baveja did not. They require you to keep choosing growth, especially when the job gets harder.

If you are ready to build that growth into a structured path, the Professional Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning (PgCTL) from Suraasa is designed for teachers who want their practice, their credentials and their career to move forward together. And you won't walk that path alone. We start with the teacher, and we stay with them.

For the Love of Teaching.