As a teacher, you have to make a seemingly infinite number of decisions each day. How will you handle the student that sits in the back of class and never pays attention? What will you do when your brilliant and engaging lesson plan doesn’t seem to reach your students? How will you help the student that has failed most assignments since the beginning of the year? What will you do to control your classroom on the days when your students get out of control?
These are a variety of situations that many teachers have faced or will face at some point in their career as an educator. But there are hundreds (if not thousands!) of other decisions that you make everyday as an educator in your classroom. These include planning and revising curriculum, personalizing learning, forming student relationships, giving both structured and unstructured feedback, grading…the list goes on and on.
How can someone possibly handle the enormous amount of decisions that need to be made each hour, day, week, month or school year? The answer lies in a teacher’s emotional intelligence, or EQ. Your EQ determines your ability to make quick, good decisions. This is necessary to keep your classroom running smoothly and your students learning as best they can. When you really think about it, your success as an educator stems from your ability to be a good decision maker.
