What School Principals Look for in Teachers, and How You Can Grow Into It

You have the degree. You have the certificates. You have years of lessons behind you. And still, when you sit across from a hiring panel or wait for a promotion decision, a quiet question follows you: what are they actually looking for?

Most teachers never get a straight answer. Job adverts list qualifications. Appraisal forms list competencies. But the people who make the decisions rarely say out loud what tips the balance from one candidate to another.

So we asked them. In a Suraasa Leadership Series conversation moderated by Loulou Hsaiky, Lead of Learning Operations at Suraasa, three leaders from DSB International School, Mumbai sat down with Suraasa CEO and teacher educator Rishabh Khanna. Howard Gee is the school's Principal. Stephanie Holt is its Director of Learning. Richard leads the Primary Section. Between them, they hire, observe, coach and promote teachers every year.

Their answer surprised some listeners. Paper still matters, but far less than most teachers assume. What school principals look for sits underneath the CV: how you relate to children, how you adapt when a lesson falls apart, and how honestly you reflect on your own practice.

This article walks through what they said, why it matters, and what you can do with it in your classroom this week.

The Evolving Classroom: Moving Beyond Content Delivery

For a long time, a good teacher meant a teacher who knew the subject and could cover the syllabus on time. That definition has not disappeared. It has simply stopped being enough.

If you want to hear the leaders explain this shift in their own words, Howard Gee opens the discussion by describing the teachers who keep growing year after year, and it is worth watching for his framing alone.

Howard's point was simple and sharp. The teachers who grow and evolve are the ones who see their role holistically. They do not think of themselves as a physics teacher or a Grade 3 teacher first. They think of themselves as the adult responsible for the young people in front of them.

That shift changes everything that follows. A subject teacher measures a lesson by whether the content got covered. A holistic teacher measures it by whether the students in the room moved forward, as learners and as people. The second definition is harder. It brings in behaviour, wellbeing, confidence, friendships, home situations and a dozen other things no syllabus mentions.

Howard argued that this difficulty is exactly the point. When you take responsibility for the whole child, you meet a far wider range of challenges. Each of those challenges pushes you to learn something new. Growth stops being something your school schedules for you on an in-service day. It becomes a natural result of the job you have chosen to do.

Rishabh Khanna pushed the idea further. In his view, the best educators equate their teaching directly with student learning. If the students did not learn, the teaching did not happen, however polished the slides looked. And crucially, these teachers refuse to hide behind obstacles. Large classes, mixed-ability groups, limited resources and missing homework are real. Outstanding teachers acknowledge them and then ask what they can still do.

Here is how that difference shows up in an ordinary week:

If that last row feels unfamiliar, backward design lesson planning is a practical way to start. You define the learning first and design the activities second.

Cultivating a Growth Mindset and Holistic Teaching Identity

Every teacher has a story about why they chose this work. Somewhere in that story is a belief about what kind of teacher you are. The panel suggested that the teachers who keep improving hold that identity loosely enough to let it change.

A fixed teaching identity sounds like this: "I'm a strict teacher." "I'm not a tech person." "I'm good with older students, not younger ones." Each statement may be partly true today. The trouble comes when it becomes a reason to stop learning.

A growth-oriented identity sounds different. "I've been strict, and it has worked for structure. I'm noticing it may cost me trust with some students. I want to explore that." The teacher keeps their strengths and stays curious about their blind spots.

Howard's comment on reflection, which he returned to later in the conversation, sums this up neatly:

"You can't get better if you don't learn from what you've got wrong."
Howard Gee, Principal, DSB International School, Mumbai

That line sounds obvious. In practice, it asks a lot. Admitting a lesson went badly can feel risky in schools where observation feels like inspection. Many teachers learn early to present every lesson as a success. Leaders at DSB were clear that they read this the other way round. A teacher who can only talk about their wins tells a hiring panel very little. A teacher who can describe a lesson that failed, explain why, and show what they changed tells the panel almost everything.

So how do you build this identity deliberately? Three habits help.

• Name your default. Write down three sentences that describe your teaching style. Then ask a trusted colleague whether they agree. The gap between your view and theirs is your growth edge.
• Teach outside your comfort zone once a term. Take a lesson type, age group or strategy you usually avoid. Try it with low stakes and notice what you learn about yourself.
• Separate your worth from a single lesson. A lesson that fails is information. It is not a verdict on your career.

None of this requires a course or a budget. It requires the decision to treat your own teaching as something you are still building. That is the identity hiring leaders recognise immediately.

Why Human Relationships and Safety Drive Academic Success

When Loulou asked the panel what matters most for student learning, Stephanie Holt did not hesitate. She pointed to the research, which consistently places the teacher-student relationship among the factors with the highest impact on learning.

"Nothing can replace the relationships between teachers and students."
Stephanie Holt, Director of Learning, DSB International School, Mumbai

Stephanie's argument was not soft. It was practical. Students need to feel safe, valued and cared for before meaningful academic progress can happen. A child who is anxious about being laughed at will not volunteer a half-formed idea. A child who suspects the teacher has already written them off will not attempt the hard question. Learning requires risk, and students only take risks in rooms that feel safe.

This is consistent with large bodies of education research. John Hattie's Visible Learning synthesis is one of the most widely cited reviews of what influences achievement, and teacher-student relationships feature prominently in it. The Education Endowment Foundation also publishes accessible evidence summaries on behaviour, metacognition and classroom climate that point in the same direction: the conditions in the room shape what students can learn in it.

Psychological safety is not the same as low expectations. In fact, the two work together. Students tend to rise to high standards when they trust the adult setting them. Without that trust, high standards feel like a threat. With it, they feel like belief.

What does relationship-building look like when you have 40 students and a packed timetable? It is less about grand gestures and more about small, consistent signals:

• Greet students by name at the door. It takes seconds and tells every child they were noticed.
• Follow up on something personal. "How did the football match go?" shows you remembered.
• Respond to wrong answers with curiosity. "Tell me how you got there" protects dignity and reveals thinking.
• Repair after conflict. If you lose your temper or misjudge a situation, say so. Modelling repair teaches more than any rule poster.
• Make expectations predictable. Safety comes partly from knowing what happens next. Clear routines lower anxiety.

If routines are an area you want to strengthen, our guide to classroom management strategies that actually work covers structures that support relationships instead of replacing them.

Hiring leaders can usually tell within a demo lesson whether a teacher builds connection. They watch how you learn names, how you handle a hesitant student, and whether children seem comfortable being wrong in front of you. That is what school principals look for long before they check your certificates.

Adaptive Teaching: Meeting Learners Exactly Where They Are

Richard, who leads the Primary Section at DSB, described the moment every teacher knows. You planned an activity carefully. You start it. Within two minutes, it is obvious it is not working. Some students are lost. Others finished already. A few have checked out.

What happens next, Richard argued, is where great teaching shows itself. He described meeting children where they are as the number one starting point. That means constantly assessing where learners are in real time, and pivoting immediately when an activity fails or when a child needs a different way in.

The alternative is familiar. A teacher who is anxious about the plan pushes through it, because the plan says so, or because an observer is in the room. The lesson gets completed. The learning does not happen.

Adaptive teaching depends on two skills working together. First, you need to notice what is happening. Second, you need options ready when you see it.

Noticing in real time

You cannot adapt to what you cannot see. Quick checks for understanding give you that visibility without stopping the lesson. Mini whiteboards, thumbs up or down, a single exit question, or asking three students to explain the idea to a partner while you listen. Our list of 25 quick classroom assessment techniques gives you plenty to choose from.

This is the heart of assessment for learning. You are not grading. You are gathering evidence to make your next decision. If the distinction feels blurry, our guide to assessment for learning vs assessment of learning sets it out clearly.

Having options ready

Pivoting well is easier when you have planned a few alternatives in advance. Before a lesson, ask yourself three questions:

1. If students find this too hard, what simpler entry point can I offer? A concrete example, a visual, or a worked model.
2. If students find this too easy, what extension pushes their thinking? A "why" question, a counter-example, or a transfer task.
3. If the activity itself fails, what is my backup way to reach the same learning goal?

Notice that the learning goal stays fixed while the route changes. That is the discipline Richard was describing. Flexibility serves the outcome. It does not abandon it.

When panels watch a demo lesson, they often care less about whether everything went smoothly and more about how you responded when it did not. A candidate who notices confusion, pauses, and tries another approach demonstrates exactly the judgement schools need.

What School Hiring Panels Really Look for Beyond the CV

This was the part of the conversation many teachers were waiting for. Howard Gee and Stephanie Holt were candid. A long list of qualifications does not impress them much on its own. Credentials open the door. They rarely decide who walks through it.

What they examine instead is reflection. When they interview candidates, they look at how you talk about your mistakes, how you assess your own lessons, and whether you hold a genuine educational philosophy that you can explain and defend.

That changes how you should prepare. Many teachers rehearse answers about their achievements. Fewer prepare to discuss their failures with honesty. Yet that is often the question that separates candidates.

Here is what the panel's emphasis means in practice:

How to prepare for a reflection-focused interview

Try this before your next interview or appraisal conversation. Pick two lessons from the past term. One that went well and one that did not. For each, write short answers to four prompts:

• What was I trying to help students learn?
• What actually happened?
• Why do I think it happened that way?
• What did I change next time, and what was the result?

Those four answers become a ready, honest story. They show self-awareness, a learning-first focus and the habit of improvement. All three appear in what school principals look for when they shortlist.

Then do one more thing. Write a single paragraph that describes your educational philosophy. Not a mission statement full of big words. A clear explanation of what you believe about how children learn and how that shapes your teaching. If you cannot write it, that is useful information too. It tells you where to start thinking.

If you are aiming at international schools specifically, our step-by-step guide on moving from a CBSE school to an international school covers the wider transition, from applications to demo lessons.

The True Purpose of Professional Development: Implementation Over Certificates

Rishabh Khanna made what may have been the most challenging argument of the session, especially coming from the CEO of a teacher education organisation. Professional development fails, he said, when the credential becomes the goal.

Collecting certificates feels productive. Each one is visible proof of effort. But if a teacher finishes a workshop on constructivism and then teaches exactly as before, nothing has changed for the students. The certificate records attendance. It does not record growth.

Rishabh described the real purpose of professional development in two steps. First, identify a genuine growth area in your own practice. Second, translate the relevant ideas into tangible changes in your classroom. Take constructivism as his example. Understanding that students build knowledge actively is the easy part. The real work is redesigning a lesson so that students investigate, discuss and construct an idea instead of copying it from the board.

This lines up with international evidence. The OECD's Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) has long examined teachers' professional development and its link to classroom practice, and it consistently treats sustained, practice-focused learning as more valuable than one-off events.

So how do you make professional development count? Use a simple implementation loop:

1. Choose one growth area. Not five. One. For example, "My questioning stays at recall level."
2. Learn something specific. A framework like Bloom's taxonomy gives you language for higher-order questions.
3. Try it in a real lesson. Plan three higher-order questions for Thursday's class.
4. Gather evidence. How did students respond? Did more of them reason, or did they freeze?
5. Adjust and repeat. Refine the questions over several weeks until the change becomes habit.

Notice how this approach reframes credentials. A strong qualification is still valuable when it is built around practice, observation and reflection. Suraasa's Professional Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning (PgCTL), for example, is designed around applying ideas in your own classroom instead of only reading about them. If you are weighing qualifications, our comparison of B.Ed vs PgCTL sets out the differences honestly. Whatever you choose, judge it by one question: will this change what my students experience?

For a structured way to plan the year, our guide to CPD for teachers: what counts and what doesn't walks through it month by month. And if you have noticed the gap between training days and classroom reality, read bridging the gap between professional development and real classroom impact.

Integrating AI Thoughtfully: Pedagogy First, Technology Second

No conversation about tomorrow's teachers can avoid artificial intelligence, and this panel did not try. Stephanie Holt and Rishabh Khanna offered the same caution from different angles: do not let the tool drive the teaching.

Stephanie described a pattern many leaders see. A teacher discovers an impressive new tool and then looks for a lesson to use it in. The order is backwards. Good teaching begins with a learning intention. What should students understand, be able to do, or think about differently by the end? Only then does the teacher decide which method best serves that goal. Sometimes that method is an AI tool. Sometimes it is a hands-on activity, a discussion, or a pencil and paper.

Stephanie also made the point that good teaching is good teaching regardless of the label attached to it. A new name or a new platform does not change what makes learning work.

Rishabh reinforced this. Educators need to establish the learning outcome first and then ask honestly whether AI or a traditional approach will serve the student better. That is a pedagogical decision, not a technological one.

International guidance points the same way. UNESCO's work on artificial intelligence in education emphasises a human-centred approach, with teachers keeping professional judgement over how and when AI is used.

A simple decision filter for AI in your classroom

Where AI often helps most is on the teacher's side of the desk: drafting differentiated questions, generating examples, or saving time on administrative tasks so you have more energy for students. Our guides on how AI is changing teaching and prompting frameworks to cut lesson planning time show practical ways to do this while keeping pedagogy in charge.

When panels ask about technology in interviews, they are rarely testing whether you know the latest app. They want to hear that you think about learning first and choose tools with intention.

Practical Strategies to Foster Lifelong Curiosity in Students

Every point the panel raised connects to a larger aim. Schools do not simply want students who pass exams. They want students who keep asking questions after they leave. Curious students grow from curious classrooms, and curious classrooms grow from teachers who model curiosity themselves.

Howard Gee also addressed a worry that stops many teachers from personalising learning. Adaptive teaching, he explained, does not mean preparing dozens of individual worksheets for every lesson. That approach burns teachers out and rarely lasts. Personalisation happens through everyday interactions: knowing your students well enough to tailor your questions, your pacing and your support in the moment.

That insight makes curiosity-building manageable. Here are strategies that draw on the panel's ideas and fit into a normal timetable.

1. Differentiate through questions, not paperwork

Plan a ladder of questions on the same topic. A recall question for students building confidence, an explanation question for most of the class, and an open "what if" question for those ready to stretch. You teach one lesson. Each student meets it at the right level.

2. Start with a puzzle, not a definition

Open a lesson with something surprising. A photograph, a strange result, a contradiction. Ask students what they notice and what they wonder. Our guide to the 5E lesson plan model builds this "engage" phase into the structure of every lesson.

3. Make thinking visible and valued

Praise good questions as much as correct answers. Keep a "wonder wall" where students post questions the class cannot answer yet. Return to them when the curriculum allows.

4. Use structured talk

Curiosity often sparks in conversation. Well-designed group work gives every student a role and a reason to think aloud. Our guide to cooperative learning strategies explains how to design group tasks that produce learning instead of noise.

5. Show your own curiosity

Tell students when you learned something new this week. Admit when you do not know an answer and show them how you would find out. Students learn far more from watching an adult think than from being told to think.

Each of these strategies depends on the foundations the panel described: a safe relationship, a clear learning intention, and a teacher willing to adapt in real time. Curiosity cannot grow in a room where students fear being wrong.

Redefining Teacher Growth as an Institutional Priority

So far, most of this article has focused on what you can do as an individual. That matters. But the panel also made something clear: teacher growth should not rest on individual effort alone.

When school leaders say they value reflection, adaptability and relationships, they take on a responsibility too. Reflection only flourishes in schools where admitting a mistake feels safe. Adaptive teaching only survives in schools where observers reward thoughtful pivots instead of perfect plans. Professional development only changes classrooms when schools give teachers time to try, review and refine.

The leaders at DSB International School described their approach in exactly these terms. They hire for the capacity to grow, and then they invest in that growth. That combination is what turns a good teacher into an outstanding one over time.

This is the opposite of the status quo many teachers know: the culture that says "just put a teacher in the room" and calls a single workshop professional development. That culture asks teachers to adapt, inspire and perform without ever showing them how. It measures outcomes without equipping anyone for them.

If you work in a school like that, you are not powerless. You can still build the habits described here. Keep a reflection journal. Ask a colleague to observe one lesson a term and give honest feedback. Choose one growth area at a time and implement it fully. Find peers, inside or outside your school, who care about teaching as much as you do. You will not walk this alone unless you choose to.

And if you lead a team, even a small department, you can shape the culture for others. Talk openly about your own lessons that did not work. Ask "what did students learn?" before "did you finish the plan?" Make room for the experiments that growth requires.

What This Means for Your Next Step

Strip the conversation back to its core and the message is clear. What school principals look for is not a longer CV. It is a particular kind of teacher.

• A teacher who sees the whole child, not just the subject.
• A teacher who equates teaching with learning and takes responsibility for it.
• A teacher who builds relationships strong enough to make risk feel safe.
• A teacher who notices when a lesson is not working and changes course.
• A teacher who reflects honestly on mistakes and grows from them.
• A teacher who uses professional development to change practice, not to collect paper.
• A teacher who puts pedagogy before technology, every time.

None of these qualities arrives with a certificate. All of them can be built, one lesson and one reflection at a time. The certificates you earn should support that work, not replace it.

You chose teaching with a purpose. The leaders on this panel are looking for teachers who keep that purpose alive and give it structure. That is a standard worth growing into.

At Suraasa, we build for exactly that kind of teacher. The system that starts with the teacher. And stays with them.

For the Love of Teaching.