Ignite Your Teaching
Ignite Your Teaching
Prepare for Your Next Teaching Interview: A Step By Step Guide
Imagine stepping into your teaching interview with the calm confidence of a seasoned educator, knowing you've got the inside scoop on everything from the school's ethos to the principal's pet projects. That's exactly what we're equipping you for in today's insightful session, as we dissect the preparation process, ensuring you're not just another face in the applicant crowd. With my own experiences of being both the interviewer and the interviewee, I'll guide you through the nuances of making a lasting impression that resonates with the core values and mission of your potential school.
Turn the nerves of an upcoming interview into excitement as we explore the strategic integration of educational jargon and the crafting of a philosophy that's uniquely yours, yet universally impressive. We've harnessed the power of AI, with tools like ChatGPT, to help you crystallize your thoughts and present a persona that's both polished and passionate. By the end of our chat, you'll have a glossary of terms that will make you sound like an insider and a tailored approach that showcases your commitment to education. This is your masterclass in transforming interview prep from daunting tasks to displaying your finest professional qualities.
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So you have an interview for a teaching position. Whether or not this is your first teaching position, or whether or not this is, you are a veteran teacher who is applying for a new position somewhere in your school board. Interviews always cause a lot of stress for teachers. It may be one of the reasons why you stop and don't consider moving, because you don't wanna go through the interview process. So in today's video, we're gonna talk all about the interview process and how to prepare and get yourself ready for your teaching interview. So one of the things I've learned from running Madly Learning is how to conduct an interview, and because I hire teachers, I'm often interviewing teachers for positions within Madly Learning. So there's a few things that I can add to this topic from both a person who conducts interviews as well as somebody who has gone on a few interviews in the last 15 years as I change different teaching positions within my own school board. Now I've successfully gotten almost every position that I have applied for, and there are some things that I have learned along the way that may help you when you are preparing for your interview. So first things first. I want you to think of this interview like a test, and that's sort of what it is, just like you would study if you were in university for a test. This is what you're going to do for your interview. Now, one of the big factors that I absolutely appreciate when interviewing candidates is that they've done their research. Nothing says unprepared like a candidate that comes to your interview that knows nothing about who you are, what position and what business you're running, or what school you're running. So if you are applying to a specific school, it's important to do your homework Research.
Speaker 1:We are in the day and age where everybody has a social media presence, so get to know who you will be interviewing with and what school. Look up information about the school's visions, what clubs and teams they have. Look at the principal. Most principals, if they've been teaching for a while, at some point were probably encouraged to have a Twitter feed. Look at their Twitter feed. Creep them on Facebook. Find them on Instagram. Find them on TikTok. Look for where they might be and what things they might post. Finding information about their likes, their dislikes. Yes, it may seem a little creepy, but knowing who you're applying to will help you tailor the information that you're going to share with them.
Speaker 1:There is a lot of information that you can share about yourself and your teaching practice. But to resonate with the person that you're applying to, it's important that you can share about yourself and your teaching practice, but to resonate with the person that you're applying to, it's important that you find some connection and you make a lasting impact. So one of the ways you can do that is by researching. So if your school that you're applying to has a robotics team and that's not something you're interested in, but you are learning, willing to learn more about, or think that's really awesome that they have teams and clubs and different things for different students, not just sports, then that might be something you want to somehow weave into an answer if it comes up in a question during your interview. When you look knowledgeable and informed, it shows that you care. When somebody comes to an interview with me and they, I can tell, have done research on what Madly Learning is, our products and offerings they've maybe looked at our website more than just maybe the homepage. It tells me that they're interested and enthusiastic. It also tells me that that person is willing to do the work, they're willing to go above and beyond, they're committed and it shows a level of excellence that you would be surprised how many people show up to interviews completely unprepared and have no idea about the position that they're applying for.
Speaker 1:It's really important that you do your research and get to know the school and the principal, as well as the staff, as much as you can. Get to know who you're applying to and what you're applying to Now. If you're just applying to a school board and you're not applying to a specific position, perhaps an entry-level position with the school board, that's also important too. Look up their strategic directions. Get to know what their mission is. What is the mission of the director of education of the trustees. Know that information. Some of that information may never come up, but it's going to allow you to tailor your answer specifically for the people that you're talking to. It's important that we make connections with the people that we're interviewing with so that we are memorable and we stand out and they have positive feelings about us at the end, and that simply comes in from being prepared and taking those opportunities to find connections between you and your interviewer.
Speaker 1:Now, as you're preparing for your interview, there's a few things that you should do and consider as you're preparing for your interview, and again we're going to leverage a whole bunch of tools that are gonna help make our job a little bit easier. To do some of this research, first, look at the positions that you're applying for and what your core subjects that you're going to teach are going to be. It is important that you have an understanding of what good teaching looks like, what high yield strategies are important for those subjects. Perhaps you're just not used to talking in the language. There is a whole language that is education and it's the eduspeak nomenclature that we find often in the front matter of curriculum documents in the PD that we attend, in board documentation. A lot of this is searchable so you can find this information. It's publicly available because most of the schools we're applying to are publicly funded schools. So in that case it's important to do your research and look up what the school board's mission statement is, but also look up that subject matter criteria.
Speaker 1:Now one of the shortcuts that you can use to help you here is you can take some of the key elements of the front matter of all of our curriculum documents, whether you're in Ontario or in another province, and you can copy that and then enter it into ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to summarize it for you pull out some key buzzwords. You can ask ChatGPT to do the analysis for you so that you're not reading six different curriculum topics about what that means. You can ask them if you're coming up with questions about assessment practices, specifically because guaranteed you're probably going to be asked a question about assessment practices. Ask ChatGPT to reference growing success. Copy and paste different paragraphs or different sections from growing success into ChatGPT. Ask it to summarize, pull out the key points of that. It's going to shorten that process with you in terms of what you need to do to prepare.
Speaker 1:One of the things you're going to want to be able to pull out and extract is going to be the buzzwords and key information. So interviews because they try to make them as standard as possible and fair to everyone. There's often a rating scale for every interview you participate in and every time you mention specific buzzwords in your answers, they're going to mark off that buzzword. They're going to mark off that element. Whether you touched on assessment, whether you touched on some of the high yield strategies, they will have key markers and indicators that they are looking for in your answers. So it's important that you prep and prepare to identify what those buzzwords are.
Speaker 1:Now this could just be as simple as you walking down to your reading or math facilitator, if you have one, talking online asking questions of people that are knowledgeable in this subject area. There's lots of Facebook groups that are subject specific, asking administrators, paying attention to staff meeting and PD meeting board documents as to what the buzzwords are for the position you're applying to. So if you know that the position you're applying to, you have a principal that used to be a reading specialist, they're probably going to be up to date on the buzzwords for reading. If you have somebody with a math or a science background, you're going to want to be making sure that you are fully versed in the buzzwords that are going to be used for those. You might want to look up and use things like differentiate instruction, high yield strategies, small group learning, science of reading and what that means. Have almost like a glossary of buzz terms that you can use and help integrate. So, as you're combing through curriculum documents, front matter, as you're prepping for this interview, make a glossary of buzzwords and then make sure that we can embed those in the answers that you're giving.
Speaker 1:Another element that you want to make sure that you clearly define for yourself is going to be your values and philosophy of education. It's this time where you've got to be really self-reflective and look at what your strengths are as a teacher, because this is what you're selling. You are selling yourself and you have to have this level of confidence that you can speak to what your values are, even if interviews make you super squirmy and uncomfortable. You are in teaching because there's something you are there for, there's some value that you are trying to share. There's a reason you got into this profession versus other professions. So, regardless of your confidence level, it's important for you to be able to communicate what you value in education. What makes you tick, what is your philosophy of education?
Speaker 1:Go back to that teacher's college assignment where they asked you to type out your philosophy of education. If you don't know how to put it into sentences and you just want something that's going to help you sort of brainstorm these ideas of what's important to you, use ChatGPT, because ChatGPT is a great tool to help you organize your thoughts and give you a voice and put words to help you explore your voice, especially when you're looking at this self-reflective piece. Tell ChatGPT that you need to write your philosophy of expectation, philosophy of teaching, and then ask them to give you questions that are going to prompt those answers. It's as simple as that. Chatgpt will then return a list of questions and prompts that will help you answer the questions. You simply answer the questions and then paste your answers into ChatGPT and ask it to write your philosophy of education. Based on your answers, it will generate and formulate a well-crafted philosophy of education that suits you. At least, it gives you the first draft and something you can tweak and change if there's something you don't like about it. This is a great way for you to sort of use the things that you don't want to say about yourself, because sometimes that feels uncomfortable, and using these AI tools to help. And using these AI tools to help.
Speaker 1:Another tool that can help you to really evaluate what it is that you do in your strengths as a teacher in your classroom and your values, as well as coming up with examples for each one of these, is to really look at the TPA competencies. So we provide a TPA binder that's for sale in our stores, that goes through all of the various questions across the domains for your TPA and there are prompts and questions that you can simply answer, and it also provides a list of a variety of evidence for each one of those competencies. So you want to be able to include that and have that as a reference for when you build and practice your questions and answers. So this is a really important key piece is you're doing your research, you're doing your work to prepare for it. We haven't even got to the interview portion.
Speaker 1:Because it's so important to do this back matter for your interview so that you are well prepared. No matter what question you give them, you can have something to say and you've done the research. And because this is going to feel very familiar when preparing for, say, exams and tests and assignments as a student, if you approach the interview as a very academic pursuit and that you are simply just being asked to give an oral report instead of you know this judgment zone where people are judging you worthy or not, think of it more like a test that you can prepare for, and sometimes that helps us to really manage our expectations and really prepare for it. The better prepared you are for questions, the more information you have in your arsenal will allow you to better prepare for this unexpected interview or some of the unexpected questions, and when they ask you to give examples. You'll have those.
Speaker 1:Many interviews these days use behavioral-based questions to decide whether or not a teacher would be able to make decisions, especially in teaching. It's all about our decision making skills, not always about our knowledge. So while we are going to prepare our knowledge and have that, we also want to have the behavioral based examples of how we've done that in the past. So really think carefully about things that you've done and how they embody these high yield strategies and the buzzwords when did you differentiate? What are 17 different examples of how you differentiated yesterday in your classroom? There's probably quite a few. So it's really important that we evaluate what those are and we come up with examples Again. We can use the TPEA binder for Madly Learning. That will help, and we come up with examples Again. We can use the chat. We can use the TPEA binder for Madly Learning. That will help us to come up with those examples. It also gives us clear prompts that allow us to really go like oh yeah, that is something I've done. So I have done these things in my classroom, so I can give that as an example. That thing I did that I thought was just normal everyday stuff is actually a great example of this kind of buzzword.
Speaker 1:So once you're fully prepared and you have your lists of information, some buzzword glossary, you've got all of the research done as well as you have all of the examples that go with those buzzwords. The next step is to take that and to actually develop questions that could be answered inside an interview. So this is a great tool. You can Google, search questions. There's Facebook groups for interviews for teachers where people will record some of the questions that teachers have been given during interviews. I would take all of that research you do on just interview type questions for a during interviews. I would take all of that research you do on just interview type questions for a teaching position. I would put that into chat GPT along with some of your buzzwords, along with any information you might have about kinds of questions that are asked in your district. Put it into chat GPT and ask them to give you 25 to 50 different interview questions that you could be asked in this potential interview. Describe the position, tell them the different questions as examples and then have them create 25 to 50 alternative questions or different questions along those same themes. This is going to help get you prepared Now, once you have those questions.
Speaker 1:Now it's time to write out your answers. Make sure that in every single answer you are embedding things like buzzwords, examples from your classroom or lived experiences. So if you're brand new to teaching and don't have any teaching experiences, you need to be drawing on your teaching practicums as well as your other job-related experiences that showcase those skills that demonstrate that you understand how to do things. You can incorporate your values and philosophy of education and perhaps tie that into the position in school that you're applying to. So you're going to write all of those possible answers for those questions so that you are prepared Once you have all of your research, you have all your buzzwords that you want to make sure you incorporate, you have the questions and you have the answers written.
Speaker 1:Then it's time to start practicing those answers. Have a trusted friend or family member ask you those questions and prepare for them. It may also help you to practice on video if you are so inclined, and you can do this and help prepare for that interview so that you can feel more confident saying these things. And finally, take those questions and answers and all of that research with you. If you happen to have the benefit of doing a virtual interview. I would recommend it because you can have all of your notes out in front of you so that you can quickly reference those.
Speaker 1:Most interviewers as well will allow you to bring a portfolio in of some sort. They may give you the questions ahead of time so you can walk through the answers and just be quizzing and questioning yourself on what the answers are, how you would answer them. How would you answer an assessment question? How would you answer a reading question? How would you answer a classroom management question? And have a variety of different types of questions that you are prepared and ready to answer, as well as examples for each of them, so that when you get to that interview you are so prepared for it. It doesn't matter what questions they ask you. You can confidently approach that interview and knock their socks off. So I want to wish you all the best on your future upcoming interviews and hopefully this information helped. If you want more information on the Madly Learning TPA binder, you can find that in our show notes on this episode. Thanks so much. Bye for now.
