#Nervous {Teach} on the Block! #interview #crunchtime

After participating in the second student teaching seminar, I was able to gain a lot of practice and develop a new set of skills to directly apply to this assignment. Interviewing with a school administrator. I was fortunate enough to take time out of our fearless leader’s day. Not only does she serve as our school principal, educator, and “ag”vocate, she runs our school every day and her name is Ms. Conaway.

Every school has a system set in place to make sure it runs efficiently. To make sure that this process continues, school administrators plan ahead to make sure that they are hiring great teachers through the interview process. As I met with Ms. Conaway, she taught me a lot about the do’s and don’ts of an interview as we talked through it together.

Beginning with the interview, right out of the gate she stared with, “Tell me about yourself and why you want to come to teach at Saul High School.” Woah. As easy as a question as this is, it requires a lot of thinking and details to make sure that the answer is adequate for a response. As the interview continued there were questions about my “area of expertise”, what are my classroom management and teaching philosophies, and what were some great and not so great lessons that I have done so far. Questions again that were easy, but loaded enough that you need to make sure to show off who you are and what you are capable of bringing to the table in the future at the school.

As our interview concluded and wrapped up, she made it a point to have clear questions that show that you are interested about the school and the staff that you will be working with in the future. She stated, “Ask questions that make the interviewing committee show off the school and what they have to offer. Ask about what attracted them to an inner city school, opportunities that will be available for growth and improvement at the school, and if you are at a CTE school ask how academic and CTE mix together as a full functioning program.” VERY interesting and VERY helpful!

In the end she had so last bits of advice for me:

-          Be Yourself

-          Show off what you have done in the past

-          Tell a storyline of how you got to where you are today

-          Talk about student teaching

Great opportunities for me to take this advice and grow on it in the future as well as share out with my peers! I am glad that I had this opportunity to show who I was and get to know my administration a little better before leaving Saul! I can’t wait to take this advice in the future to use to my advantage!