It’s that time of the year again! Freshly graduated teachers are on the lookout for teaching opportunities close to home and around the world. Like with any job search, teaching interviews come with the usual stress and anxiety over THE INTERVIEW. In Facebook groups and social media posts, newly certified teachers want to know what kind of questions they can prepare for before their first round of interviews with potential employers. In this blog post, I have gathered 10 questions you should be prepared to hear during a teaching interview. These questions come from my own experience being interview and interviewing potential teachers and from the experiences of seasoned teachers around the world.
1. What was a lesson you had that didn’t go well, and how did you fix it?
Principals will know whether you are a brand new teacher or an experienced one based on your CV – and they will want to know how you handle lessons that don’t go as planned. They also know that even though we prepare the most fascinating and engaging lessons, there are always things that don’t go according to plan. Think back to your practicums and experiences teaching. Choose one lesson that you considered to be a “bomb”. Now, instead of dwelling on what didn’t go well, impress principals by focusing on the positive outcomes of the lesson. What did you learn from the experience? How were you able to think on your feet? It’s how you dealt with the situation that will make you stand out.
(p.s. for more information on the 5 stages that all teachers go through when a lesson bombs, click HERE!)
2. What would you do if all students failed an assessment?
Let’s face it, assessing students can go either way. One minute you give them an assessment and they ace it and the next minute you want to bang your head against the wall because everyone seemed to not understand the concept you just taught. What is your plan for when the latter happens? Principals want you to go beyond the usual answer of reteach and retest. Think about communicating with your colleagues, team teaching ideas, and other collaborative ways you can get your students back on track.
3. What is your classroom management style?
Think very carefully about your classroom management style – particularly if you are new to the profession. Mastering classroom management is an ongoing process and no principal expects a new teacher to be an expert in this area. Highlight the areas that you have seen success. Was it a reward system you put in place to encourage positive behaviour? Do you use Morning Meetings to bring a sense of community to your classroom each day? Are you a teacher that encourages flexible seating? What about Brain Breaks? What are your ideas on consequences for misbehaviour in your room? All these things are to be considered when thinking about your classroom management style.
(p.s. for more information on Morning Meetings, click HERE.)
(p.p.s. for more information on my VIP Classroom Management Technique, click HERE.)
4. How do you create and maintain relationships with your students?
This is a great question to be thinking about since you will be spending an incredible amount of time with your group of students for the next 180 days (give or take a few). Teachers know that students needing the most love, affection, and attention will ask for it in a variety of negative ways. How are you going to make each child WANT to come to school every day? What are some of the special touches that you bring to your classroom that will make your students feel cared for? How do you balance the ability to push your students to be their best without being too hard on them? Why are some of your values that you want to expose your students to? Think about what is important to you and how you will bring that into your classroom.
(p.s. for a list of some wonderful character traits that students learn from their teachers, click HERE.)
5. How do you use technology in your classroom?
Depending on the budget of your school/ school board, you WILL have access to some type of technology in your classroom and school. Some schools have roaming laptops, SmartBoards, document cameras, video conferencing stations, iPads, etc. Showcase your strengths in this area and make sure to talk about how you plan to use the available technology to attain the learning objectives of your curriculum. Don’t forget to talk about learning apps, computer programs, and websites that you have used to help your students master certain concepts.
6. How do you motivate and engage your students in their learning?
What are some of the techniques you have learned to help motivate your students? How do you ensure that your students are engaged in their learning? Teaching goes way beyond text books and worksheets now! Are you using centres for math and language arts? Do you have a way to make students accountable for their progress and / or behaviour? What are your thoughts about weekly and monthly goal setting with your students? Do you use music in the classroom as an incentive? All these ideas and more help to contribute to the motivation and engagement levels of your students. Which ones do you use and why? What makes them an effective way to motivate and engage students?
(p.s. for a quick and easy way to motivate your students, click HERE.)
7. How do you deal with negative behaviour from a student?
Issues with negative student behaviour pop up on a daily basis and can bring a teacher to his/her breaking point. You need to reflect upon the type of behaviour plan you would like to implement before walking into your classroom for the first time. If you are a newly graduated teacher, speak to teacher friends that can help give you hints and tips on how to manage difficult behaviours. Keeping running records of negative behaviour, written observations, team interventions, and open lines of communication between parents, administration, colleagues, and students are great avenues to pursue when dealing with stressful situations involving negative classroom behaviours. Also, it is important for the principal to know that during stressful times you put an emphasis on maintaining your own mental health. Let him or her know what you do to alleviate stress. Is it meditation? Is it yoga? Sudoku puzzles? Is it reading great book? Is it running? Bonus points if you can show the principal how you will incorporate your stress relieving activities into your classroom or extra-curricular activity time at school.
8. How do you deal with negative behaviour from a parent?
Receiving complaints, accusations, lack of confidence, and outright rudeness from a parent can be a devastating blow to a teacher’s emotional sense of well being. Unfortunately, teachers in the profession are seeing a higher increase of negative behaviours from parents ranging from shouting at teachers to smear campaigns on social media to passive aggressive emails to parental telephone chains of teacher bashing. Sadly, it has become an unwanted, and at most times, unsubstantiated method to communicate dissatisfaction with an educator. How are you preparing for an event like this? What are your expectations of the administration when a situation like this arises? Much like the strategies you will use with a child exhibiting negative behaviour, you need to prepare yourself for when a parent will do the same.
(p.s. for more information in teacher shaming, please click HERE.)
9. What do you do during small group reading instruction?
Guided reading and guided math groups are very popular in today’s classrooms. What is fantastic about it is the fact that teachers can work with small groups of children in order to target specific learning concerns or goals. While this time is so beneficial from a teaching and learning standpoint, it can also be quite the classroom management issue. How are you planning to make sure that your reading groups and math groups remain focused and on task when you are working intensively with one group of children? Is it possible to plan this time when the resource teacher / reading specialist is scheduled to be with you in order to facilitate the instructional time? If so, how will you use this person to maximize the learning and engagement of all students and not just the ones you work with that day? Is there a specific reading program that you have used that has worked well and that you would like to implement for your guided reading classes? Providing the principal with a clear plan for guided reading or small group instructional time will give him/ her a clear look at your overall plan for student success.
10. Do you have any social media accounts?
This is a very touchy subject – but it is one that many employers both inside and outside of the teaching realm are asking their prospective employees. Be prepared to answer some questions about your social media activity. With Facebook, Instagram, Blogger, Youtube, and many more social networks out there, it wouldn’t be surprising if a potential employer didn’t already do a Facebook or Google search of your name. Consider making your profiles private and using nondescript or kid friendly profile pictures. As well, you should seriously consider who you will be “friends” with on Facebook. Once you become a teacher you will see friend requests pop up from students and their parents. Beware!
On the flip side, if you use social media to highlight your teaching ideas or teaching career, you might like to mention that to your future employer before he/she discovers it another way. Make sure that you have secured all rights and permissions from parents and former administrators if you have taken pictures and used them on a personal blog or social media page. Being a teacher and using social media to share your ideas does come with certain laws and responsibilities. Make sure you know them and apply them before posting!
And there you have it! Good luck with the job search and hopefully these questions will help you prepare for an upcoming interview — or at the very least they have opened your eyes to some of the situations you may find yourself in once you begin your teaching career.
Are there some questions that you think should be added to this list or are you curious about how to answer a question that is on your mind? Leave them in the comments below!
Have a great day!
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