Misstra Knowitall: Efficient

When I was in school, I always wondered what teachers did on those mysterious "staff development" days. What the heck does a teacher need to develop anyway, right? How to boss kids around better? How to give out detentions and keep us from doing what we want to do? How to write on chalkboards? Now that I'm a teacher myself and can see teaching as a profession instead of just something someone is, I look forward (most of the time) to staff development days as a way to improve my craft.

At our last professional development meeting, we took a S.E.L.F. profile, which helps you understand your working style. You take a 30 question survey and it puts you into one of four working styles: Social, Efficient, Loyal, or Factual.


If you've got a second, you should try it. The purpose, as it was explained to me, was to find your strengths as a team member and to also find out what parts of your personality tend to surface when you are stressed. In a school that's important because if you haven't noticed, kids will stress you the hell out. And so will adults, by the way.

But if you're more aware of your tendencies than you can be more conscious to the reasons that you are reacting to stress the way you are. You can also be more aware of why people around you are acting the way they are. They're not doing that just to get on my nerves, they're just...

a Social.

a Factual

a loyal

an efficient

And yes, I am an Efficient. That means that according to my profile, I am: practical, orderly (my wife laughs), very direct, self-determined, organized (Quiet woman!), traditional (not sure what that means), goal-oriented (check), dependable (I am a Taurus), economical (sure), ambitious (yup).

My profile also says that when stressed, I can be: dogmatic (dang), stubborn (See: Taurus), rigid (whatsoever do you mean?), unapproachable (really?), distant (huh?), critical (Well, that's just stupid), insensitive (if you want to feel that way, fine.)

According to the profile, the character from Seinfeld most like the E is Elaine. I guess I could see that.

So, I would like to take this time to apologize to all my Socials (I know y'all just want to have fun), Loyals (It's okay to be sensitive), and Factuals (You are not dull!) if I ever let my E tendencies treat you badly, I was just trying to get the job done.