The Unteachables Podcast

#82: Discover your teacher type! AND find out what this means for your classroom management.

• Claire English • Season 5 • Episode 82

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Take the quiz! What's your teacher type?!

Ever wondered why some classroom management strategies work wonders for others but fall flat for you? In today’s episode, we’re delving deep into the heart of teaching styles and uncovering what makes you uniquely you in the classroom. 

I’ll be taking you behind the scenes of my "What is Your Teacher Type?" quiz and showing you how this simple tool can unlock powerful insights into your teaching strengths and challenges.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

  • The real story behind why I created the "What is Your Teacher Type?" quiz and how it’s already helping thousands of teachers like you understand their classroom superpowers.
  • Why the one-size-fits-all approach to classroom management simply doesn’t cut it and how understanding your unique style can change everything.
  • An exclusive breakdown of the four distinct teacher types: the Dynamic Teacher, the Quiet Teacher, the Empathetic Teacher, and the Authority Figure—along with some real-life examples to help you see where you fit.


Ready to discover your teaching type and take your classroom practice to the next level? It’s time to stop trying to fit into someone else’s mould and embrace your true self as an educator.

Take the quiz now, and feel validated and confident with who you are in the classroom! 

Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!

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Speaker 1:

Oh, hi teachers, Welcome to Unteachable's podcast. Congratulations. You have just stumbled across the best free professional development and support you could ask for. I'm Claire English, a passionate secondary teacher, author, teacher mentor and generally just a big behavior nerd, and I created the Unteachable's podcast to demystify and simplify classroom management. I want this podcast to be the tangible support, community validation, mentorship, all those pretty important things that we need as teachers to be able to walk into our classrooms feeling empowered and, dare I say it, happy and thrive, especially in the face of these really tough behaviors. So, ready for some no-nonsense, judgment-free and realistic classroom management support? I've got your teacher friend. Let's do this. Hello, wonderful teachers, and welcome back to another episode of the Unteachables podcast.

Speaker 1:

And a special shout out to the fabulous person who messaged me on Instagram yesterday saying that she just said listening to the podcast, but she then binge listened from episode one all the up to the most recent episode and she said it was really cool to hear it all the way from the start because it was like this, you know, kind of fast forward of time from right from the beginning to announcing my pregnancy, to having a baby strapped to my front as I came back onto the podcast to. You know, writing the book to moving out of London back to New Zealand, and it kind of dawned on me that I really haven't shared much life stuff recently on the podcast, probably for the last 10 months, and there's a very big reason for that. It kind of plays into that, highlights real phenomenon there that we kind of like put out to people all the good stuff. We share the good stuff, we share the good stuff, we share the exciting stuff, we share the big stuff. But to be honest, there really hasn't been a great deal of exciting new big stuff happening. So I just wanted to give you a very real life update and there's a reason I'm doing this as well. It feeds into this episode about us, you know, being human beings and kind of having to lean in and respect that. But you can fast forward two minutes if you really don't want to hear this.

Speaker 1:

But the last let me tell you about the last 10 months. We have been living in New Zealand for the last 10 months. We moved out of London in February and we moved back here because my husband's father was diagnosed with stage four cancer, which is full of many, many unknowns, and we're still going on that journey, ava, the baby that I probably the last time I spoke about Ava. I don't know when that was, but Ava is now nearly two years old, still not sleeping through the night, getting cheekier and cheekier as the days go on. She is chatting her head off and she just blows me away. She is incredible. We've been getting sick constantly because she's in daycare and she's just gotten over a case of hand, foot and mouth and I am starting to feel something happening with my tongue and I'm like, oh no, not me as well.

Speaker 1:

To be honest, I am desperately missing being in the classroom. I'm missing being around people and you know I don't have any friends here. I I'm not, you know, working in a workplace. I'm just sitting here in my lounge room right now recording this, so it has been quite lonely and it feels a little bit isolating here. Some days, and most days, to be honest, I desperately miss my London life and I love when people pop into my inbox talking about, you know, what they're doing in London and anywhere.

Speaker 1:

Really, like I just I'm really excited to not to leave New Zealand because it's been beautiful. I'm in a really beautiful spot here and I'm really, really grateful, but I am looking forward to being back around family and friends and we officially have a date to move back to Australia. We have a date in the diary and as the 8th of Feb, which will be exactly a year to the day since we left London, and yeah, I'm just really excited to put down some roots and I felt really transient. So I really look forward to being back with family, with friends, staying somewhere in the same place with Ava for a longer period of time, even though I do start to get really itchy feet. I was thinking I was saying to my husband the other day maybe we put our roots down in Australia and then we go to Europe and we travel around for six months. But I just think that's the person I'll always be Kind of changes when you have kids. But yeah, I'm really looking forward to putting down some roots.

Speaker 1:

I really look forward to getting back into teaching. To be honest with you and I actually the plan for teaching is really just wanting to do some supply work Like I love. I know that might sound a little bit bonkers, but I love supply teaching. I love kind of going in and meeting new students, meeting new teachers. I love supply teaching. I love kind of going in and meeting new students, meeting new teachers, kind of roaming around different schools and I really like even with you know, you know it's going to be the most challenging classes, but I really love supply teaching. So I might do that one or two days a week in different schools around Sydney. But naturally I'll probably fall into a more permanent position but I look forward to that.

Speaker 1:

But there's obviously a lot of trepidation with the move as well. We're starting from zero, we've got no furniture, we've got nowhere to live, so it'll be a journey. So you can come along on that journey with me if you want to. I'll share a few bits and pieces as we go along. But that's my life update and I think that was a couple of minutes long. So if you have been fast forwarding, you can unfast forward now and listen to the actual episode. But yeah, that's what's been happening on my end. I don't need it to be a one way conversation. If you want to come and have a chat with me, please feel free to do so. And, as I said before, there's another reason I chose today's episode to share all of that, and it's because we are all human beings just going through our own stuff and I did a thing and I created a quiz called what's your teacher type and why, knowing that might be the key to effective classroom management.

Speaker 1:

It took me a buttload of time. It was really hard to put together. I don't think I realized what kind of Everest that quiz was going to be when I went into it. But I went on Instagram and I'm like, who thinks that this is going to be something that's helping? Like would help them? And then I got all of these responses and I'm like, okay, I'll do it. Fantastic. And then I sat down at my computer and started to actually like map out this quiz and the things you have to think about. That I didn't even realize. I'm like, okay, these are the four teacher types that I want to convey to people, but then how do I lead you all to actually finding out your teacher type in a way that's authentic and meaningful? And like what questions do I put together? So it was actually really difficult, but it was very worth it because since I've launched this quiz what is your teacher type I have had I think I've had about 6,000 teachers do the quiz and I have had hundreds of messages from people saying, oh my God, this is, it's so spot on, this is just so validating. This is exactly what I needed to hear. I wish I heard this sooner because, yeah, I think everyone needs to hear this kind of information, but why did I spend a bunch of time investing in trying to help you figure that out?

Speaker 1:

I really believe the way that we approach classroom management in schools is so overdue for a narrative shift and I'm not talking just about punitive versus non-punitive, trauma-informed, you know like. I'm not talking about that stuff that's very much on the lips of everyone at the moment. I'm talking about how we teach teachers about classroom management and how we support teachers with classroom management, because I, frankly, am fed up with people being told that they're too quiet, they're, you know, not loud enough, they're too relaxed, they're too strict or they're too whatever. That person in front of them thinks. They need fixing about their personality for us to be able to class you manage effectively, because the truth is we are not to anything necessarily. It's not about changing who we are or it shouldn't be at least and if anyone's made you feel like you have to change yourself and they are wrong, it's about understanding your strengths. It's about identifying where you might struggle because of your teacher type and using this to strategically craft a classroom management approach that doesn't make you feel like you have to change who you are.

Speaker 1:

And this is where this quiz comes in. That's why I was so passionate about doing this quiz, because you deserve so much more than these cookie-cutter strategies that don't work for you, that don't respect the wonderful individual you are, that don't mesh with your unique set of strengths and potential struggles. You need something that's more tailored. You need something that's going tailored. You need something that's going to help you lean into the things that you need to lean into. So I am going to tell you a little bit about each of the teacher types and I want you to guess which one of these teacher types you are. But if you do the quiz, it's not like I've just given you a sentence or two.

Speaker 1:

I have put together and that's where a lot of the time went as well but I put together a full profile for each of these teacher types, as well as three classroom management superpowers, three struggles that you might experience, a top tip for you to take into the classroom immediately and run with an important reminder for your specific teacher type and some tailored support for your type as well. So, for example, if you find out what your teacher type is, you'll get a big profile. You've got some strengths and struggles. You've got three podcast episodes or two podcast episodes that might, you know, be really helpful for you to listen to immediately to kind of harness those strengths or to overcome some of the struggles. And you've got some tips and some, you know, all of those things that I've put together tailored for your teacher type. So here are the four teacher types.

Speaker 1:

There's a dynamic teacher. The dynamic teacher is engaging, full of energy, silly, chatty, not necessarily all of the time, but this is kind of their personality that they lean into. They hear don't smile before the first term and they go. Not a chance that is not happening. There is no way I'm going an hour without smiling. If you are a dynamic teacher, you tend to use your voice a lot to get the attention of the room. You rely on your volume quite a lot for that classroom management. But you also might find that bringing down that energy and switching to, you know, like a quieter, more reserved, more calm persona quite difficult and it might help you to kind of envision John Keating out of Dead Poets Society, because that's your teacher pairing.

Speaker 1:

I've got a teacher pairing for each of the teacher types and I started with this one because I am the dynamic teacher. I really, really struggle to bring the energy in the room down because I am always amping up the energy. So I have to be very intentional and of course it's a strength, like being able to project my voice and, you know, like think on my feet and do things in a really dynamic way, like that is a massive superpower. But I also have a lot of struggles when it came to using my non-verbals to bring the energy down. And if you've heard the last few episodes of the podcast, you'll know exactly what I mean. If you haven't listened to those, go back and listen to them, because they're golden. But yeah, the dynamic teacher you have so much like energy and so much power in that volume and that energy. But also it can be very challenging for us to kind of be more credible when we're leaning on the approachable.

Speaker 1:

Then there's the quiet teacher. If you are a quiet teacher, you are probably the kind of teacher that's told you need to be more dominant, you need to project your voice more. The teacher pairing that I've got for you is Miss Honey from Matilda Gentle. Nurturing creates a calm and stable environment. Your classroom will feel like a refuge where students know that they're seen and heard. That is your strength. However, being softly spoken can also lead to many challenges, making it tough to assert your authority, which might lead to struggles with low-level behaviours. However, in saying this, remember this is about recognising our struggles and then really using our strengths. If you are a quiet teacher, oh my gosh, you can absolutely nail non-verbal pedagogies that will transform the low-level behaviors in your classroom. So if you are struggling, if you're a quieter teacher and you're struggling, feeling like you know, out of control of your room, like there's so many low-level disruptions, you just need the right strategies to be able to use to you know, harness those strengths of your personality. So it's not something that you need to change about yourself and I really talk about the quiet teacher personality a lot, because I think that you guys get the hardest of times when it comes to people trying to change who you are. But it's not about changing who you are, it's about trying to use that and be strategic with that and what you have.

Speaker 1:

Then there is the empathetic teacher. In a nutshell, you're the kind of teacher and, by the way, since I've launched this quiz, I think 40% of the people who have done the quiz have been the empathetic teacher type, and there are a lot of crossovers between these teacher types, by the way, so you might have some traits of each, but the empathetic teacher is the one that a lot of the teachers who come through the Unteachables Academy doing this quiz come out as, and I'm not surprised because of the work that I do here. So, in a nutshell, if you're the empathetic teacher, you're the kind of teacher students will flock to when they need someone to chat to, and that's really special. But it also can take a heavy emotional toll. Your teacher pairing was Erin from Freedom Writers, by the way. You understand that when students struggle, it's often due to things outside of their control, and this compassion that you have for your young people drives you to support even the most challenging of behaviors. But it can also lead to things like compassion fatigue. It can lead to, you know, you really struggling to carve out your own time to recharge and that's the biggest thing, with the empathetic teacher really allowing yourself to invest in your own time and making sure that you are able to. You have the capacity to support your young people. You are able to. You have the capacity to support your young people.

Speaker 1:

Then the final teacher type is the authority figure. You're like the professor McGonigal of the classroom. You are firm, you are fair, you are consistent, you set boundaries and expect students to rise to that challenge. Structure and discipline are your go-to tools and while you're not afraid to enforce these rules and set these boundaries, it's because you care deeply about your students and you care deeply about their results. You're respected for this. You are a well-respected teacher and the students who understand what is beneath all of these things know that there's a lot of heart behind it.

Speaker 1:

However, sometimes your no-nonsense approach can be misconstrued by students and you can struggle to find that balance between the approachable and the credible. So, while the dynamic teacher leans a lot on the approachable, you lean a lot on the credible and it's like a pendulum. I was speaking about this in my Behaviour Club Live session last month where I had two teachers who had the complete opposite personalities and they both did the quiz, and one was like yes, I'm the dynamic teacher, yes, I'm the you know the authority figure, and they had these exact struggles, and I was talking about it as being like a pendulum where we need to meet in the middle somewhere. We need to have moments where we're very like I mean, you know, boundaried in everything that we do, but making sure that we're holding those high expectations and being a really credible figure in the classroom. But that pendulum needs to swing the other way sometimes as well, and we need to be approachable with our young people.

Speaker 1:

We need to have time where we're a little bit more relaxed, and finding that balance for every single teacher and every single persona is really important, and the first place to start is just finding where you sit in this, because what's most important to note about these teacher types is that, although each of them has their struggles with classroom management, they also have huge strengths, and if anybody has told you you need to change, if anyone's told you that you know you're too serious or you're too quiet, you're too loud, you're too this, you're too that they're wrong, you just need the right tools, strategies, support that respect you as an individual, that support you to make strategic and intentional shifts, but still harnessing those natural strengths you have. Because, although there are obvious challenges that every single one of us will have. It's actually really empowering to know that every single one of us has those challenges, no matter what personality we bring into the classroom. But we also have these beautiful natural strengths that we can harness as well. And if people are telling you that you just need to change who you are, then that is a damn shame for the strengths that you do possess and you're not being taught to use those effectively.

Speaker 1:

And a fantastic place to start is taking my quiz. So if you have not done that yet, please head over and do that now. It is so so worth it, even just for the validation to know. Oh, my gosh, that is who I am and that is okay. And here are my strengths and here are my struggles, and this is how I can support my students better and this is how I can improve my classroom management, and it's not doing so in a way that is disrespecting the person that you are.

Speaker 1:

So if you want to do that, the link is in the show notes or you can just go to the dash on teachablescom forward slash quiz and, whether you're a quiet, reflective type, a strong and authoritative leader or bursting with energy and enthusiasm, learning how to harness these strengths and overcome those struggles of your unique style is such a huge key for being able to be happy and confident and feel capable in the classroom, and I am so happy to be able to support you with that. If you do the quiz and you're like yes, this is, this is me, this is so me, please feel free to come over and have a chat on Instagram or email or wherever you want to chat to me about it. I'm always open to studying that conversation. It's always wonderful to hear from you and if that person's listening, that sent me that message about listening from Episode 1 up to the current. Hello, it's so nice to have you back here and that is all. That is all for now. I shall see you next week. At the same time,

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Claire English

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