Perhaps the most important aspect of being a school administrator is hiring. Hiring new teachers is the one decision that will have the greatest impact on all aspects of a school, most importantly, student learning. Hire a great teacher, and your students will have transformative experiences, learn a great deal, and love coming to school. Hire a lesser teacher, and depending on the circumstances you may be risking your school culture, or need to spend additional time addressing parent concerns or providing them additional supports. No school leader dislikes helping teachers get better or meeting with parents, but all would agree it’s preferable to hire rock-star teachers in the first place.
Interviewing is high stakes, and sometimes, tricky business. Check out these five questions to help you get beyond the canned and practiced responses, ensuring your hiring the best fit for your school and your students.
1. “Tell me about the best lesson you’ve ever taught.”
This gives you an immediate sense of how the candidate defines quality instruction and what they value as an educator. If the lesson they discuss is so innovative and amazing that you can’t wait to see it in action with your students, you know you might have a winning candidate. On the other hand, if what they describe is fairly mundane, or an instructional practice you would not be happy to see in the classroom, you know you can start skipping interview questions now to save the the committee’s time.
Potential follow-up questions might include “How do you know it was effective?” or “What do you think made the lesson so effective?” If interviewing an inexperienced teacher, you could ask them to describe the best lesson they ever observed being taught just as well.
2. “If I handed you a class roster right now, and let you pick any one of my our students - with you knowing nothing about them but their name - and I told you I’ll give you $10,000 if at the end of three hours, that student can multiply fractions. Walk me through what those three hours might look like for you and that student.”
This question was directly inspired by the $10,000 Challenge we issue potential Edunators during our workshops and staff development trainings. It’s a great way to get an idea for how a candidate might structure their classroom, what they prioritize as a teacher, and their overall philosophy.
We always use three hours because that’s (roughly) about how long a secondary teacher has a given student in a 5-day week. You can also change the grade or give a specific standard as well, such as “If we give you a 4th grader...and ask you to teach them to multiply fractions”. If this is a question you really like and want to dig deeper on, give it to the candidate ahead of time and let them know you’ll be asking it for a more in-depth discussion.
The best candidates start talking about what they would do to build rapport with the student, how they’d formative assess the student, how they’d “set the hook” and make the learning exciting or important to the student, followed up by examples of differentiation or discussion about multiple opportunities for success. Weaker candidates may not have many ideas, seem overwhelmed, or not mention repeated efforts, multiple opportunities for success or trying new ideas when one doesn’t work.
3. “Tell me about something you’ve read recently and how impacted your teaching.”
This is a question I learned while working with Beth Houf, co-author of “Lead Like a Pirate” and rockstar principal in her own right. Ideally you’re looking to hear a candidate give evidence of their commitment to professional learning and improvement in their craft.
The best candidates rattled off examples of books they’ve read (either independently or as part of a book study, etc) or gave examples of blogs or social media things they’d participated in (Twitter chats, etc). Others will be caught off guard and fumble for any example of anything they’ve done lately to better themselves. One candidate even admitted to me once that she hadn’t read anything longer than a Facebook post since college (we did not hire her).
4. “Describe a time when your instruction was deeply influenced by a colleague.”
I like this question a lot and found it with several other great ones on the Solution Tree Blog written by William M. Ferriter. It gets to the point of trying to identify people who can work effectively in a Professional Learning Community by requiring candidates to provide examples of them actually collaborating about instructional practices, which seems like a fairly revolutionary or novel concept to some.
5. “Why do you want to be a teacher?” followed shortly by “How are you going to do THAT?”
When you ask someone in an interview setting “Why did you want to become a teacher?” you’re going to get a variety of answers, but usually in the same vein...and you’ll almost never catch anyone off guard because they’ve been answering that question since their Freshman year “Intro to Education” class.
Most candidates will answer with something like “because I love kids” or “because I love my content and want to share that love with kids”. The better answers will be something more grandiose, such as “I want to make a difference” or they’ll tell a story about a teacher who once had a profound impact on them. Which is why the follow-up is so important.
Take the candidate’s answer and flip it around and ask them “How?”. If a candidate says “I became a teacher because I wanted to save lives” follow-up immediately with “How are you going to save lives as a [whatever position they’re interviewing for]. Push on this, ask for specifics. “What will you do as a [x] to ‘make a difference’ in the lives of kids? Because if we hire you….that’s EXACTLY what we want you to do.”
And honestly, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? Hopefully you’ve got great answers to that question, and hopefully, so do the candidates you’ll hire next.
Looking for a new teaching position and need to brush up on your interview skills? Or are you looking to hire a passionate teacher, ready to overcome obstacles and focus on learning? Check out our eBook, "21 Questions for Hiring 'Edunators'" below!
