Teacher Interview Questions and Tips!

hey you guys welcome to my channel and in today's video we're going to be talking about interviews if you have not subscribed already i would love for you to join i do a lot of teaching vlogs i teach fifth grade in southern california i'm in my second year teaching and this is all teaching and education related with a little zest of lifestyle you got this cheers right now as i'm filming it is prime time for teaching interviews really with my experience in um applying and getting hired it has always been as early as february as late as june even july i know teachers that were hired three days before the first day of school so i would say prime time is spring because a lot of times teachers are leaving they need positions filled they're flying positions a lot of position teachers are switching switching grade levels and schools and then they figure out what they need and then that's when they hire so right now is prime time in today's video we will be discussing 21 interview questions that i have experienced myself that i have found online which i think are important questions and i will be giving you sample answers and some non-examples of mistakes i have done during interviews a little background on myself the previous district i was in it took me three interviews to get a job with them but i was interviewing prematurely i wasn't even with my credential but i really failed on one of those interviews another one prior it was for a charter school i didn't know it was a charter school it was my very one of my very first interviews and i totally bombed that one too but i got the job i just interviewed last year for my current district and it was one of my best interviews i've ever done i'm gonna have to do another job search next school year so hopefully this video will help many teachers alike with interview questions that have been asked and just some answers that you can say so while i'm asking these questions i'm going to be answering them how i would answer them in an interview now i will just give my biggest tips when you go in for your interview a lot of my viewers are new to teaching or student teaching or in college to be a teacher so i would just say when you go in for your first interview act as if it's not a big deal i have found when you go into interviews and you're kind of just like i got this it's fine it's not a big deal if i don't get it it would be awesome if i did but it's not the end of the world if i didn't if you go in with that mentality i believe it helps a lot with your confidence and you're just like whole persona about yourself so when i interview i truly just try to be really relaxed and just think of it it's just an interview it's not a big deal like it's gonna be fine and from past experience my last interview the district person interviewing me goes he told me he goes straight off of personality and how you are you know like your personality and of course answers to support but really just be relaxed don't stress out it's gonna be okay now a tip i would have is in my last district i had a teaching portfolio i spent hours on it they didn't care to look at it they didn't want to look at it and i even had a friend who did another portfolio for them they didn't even look at it so that was one district one district didn't care to see a portfolio when i applied to my next district i am 100 going to have a portfolio i don't have mine with me because i moved and i have no idea where it is but i will be making a new one and i think it's really important so you can pull up examples that you have done in your classroom or while you're student teaching so i would absolutely have it um and be sure it's spell checked my last interview i went on for my current job i had a lot of work in there that i did in my credentialing program and i misspelled something on a worksheet and it was pointed out so just make sure you have spell checked everything and it just makes sense and my next tip which is probably the most obvious and i'm not going to spend a lot of time on it is to dress professionally i mean that's odd i think everyone knows this but i have to say it just in case you don't what i typically like to wear are black slacks cute shoes i like to wear a black shirt similar to what i'm wearing now and if you're on a budget let me show you a nice little jacket i found i found this super nice jacket at marshall's on clearance for 14 if you're in your last semester of college i would be looking around finding some cute interview clothes because they really make you feel good and the interviewer is absolutely looking at that in my opinion one of my professors is like a really high up in the district office um i think he's the superintendent actually and he's straight up said like dressed to impress dressing is very important so i will pass it on to you 14 super nice blazer beautiful another thing you need to do is you need to practice you need to practice with yourself you need to practice in front of the mirror you need to practice in front of someone else another human you need to practice in front of your dogs your cats you need to practice what i did and i still have for my next interview is i wrote out every question i found and i wrote sample answers for them and i practiced reading my answers but not reading them word for word just making points because if you sound like a manuscript you're just reading something off that's not genuine and more times than not education's a very genuine especially teaching is a very genuine career field so if you're sounding like a robot you're probably not going to get the job so just be yourself be yourself be yourself be yourself so i'm answering these questions as a second to third year teacher now if you're a student teaching uh just take my answers and fit them into how your master teacher taught them if your math if you didn't see your master teacher doing these be creative if i was a teacher going into the profession for the first time i would just constantly refer to what i did during my student teaching experience i would say during my student teaching experience i did this in the classroom i did this in the classroom because you were teaching it's just you weren't the master teacher so i would constantly say i i first person say first person because it shows that you did the action and you know what you're doing all right so let's get into questions i have all my notes here i have 21 questions yes that's just how the number turned out and let's get into this first question why do you want to be a teacher now that is such a loaded question you really just gotta answer this for yourself so i'm not going to answer this question because it is truly why you want to be a teacher i personally would always will always bring up the relationships with the students really it just goes with you and why you want to be you went through all the schooling you took all the exams really why do you want to be a teacher question number two what is your teaching philosophy i have been asked this question to me it goes hand in hand with the first question why do you want to be a teacher what is your teaching philosophy if you don't have a teaching philosophy i would research one and i would put it on your resume i would also put it in your teaching portfolio and you can quickly browse uh refer back to your teaching portfolio all right question number three why do you want to work for a school and district let me give you a non-example and this happened to me i'm not sure that happened to me i didn't know the school it was the charter school i didn't know it was anything special i didn't even know what a charter school was and i didn't even know it was a charter school so definitely research your school or district before you apply i'm not going to make that mistake again all right question number four how would you get your classroom ready for the first day of school non-example answer um i'm gonna set up a lot of bulletin boards and i'm gonna just cover my walls with paper i'm just gonna make it really colorful and just so the students walk in and their eyes just go and they're just going to be really excited to be in my classroom because it's going to be all crazy in there and it's going to be so colorful i'm going to let the kids sit wherever they want because it's their classroom and they get to do whatever they want how i would answer this question is leading up to planning for the first day of school i will ensure that i practice my routines and procedures with my class in my lesson plans leading up to the first day of school i'm going to ensure i will be practicing procedures and routines often often often i'm also going to be planning a lot of incorporating a lot of icebreakers in the first few weeks in my classroom just so students become familiar and they you know loosen up a little bit and they feel more comfortable in the classroom because that's how learning takes place learning takes place when students feel comfortable and in order for that to happen it's important on the first few days of school weeks leading up and weeks prior that students need to feel comfortable do that by establishing routines and procedures and icebreakers so we're all on the same level we have all the same expectations and we are ready to learn after about a month we can start incorporating curriculum i would even um go as far as saying i will ensure that each student has their own desk i want my students to come in have somewhere to sit because i knew know when i was a student if i didn't have somewhere to sit i would be stressed out i wouldn't feel welcomed i want my students to walk in have their place with their name with their name tag a pencil box and a pencil so they are ready to learn and they know that they're welcome here and they're in the right spot for that question i would just really drive home that you need to teach your rules and procedures and icebreakers to have students feel comfortable in your classroom and i would also say students will not learn from someone or somewhere where they do not feel safe all right question number five how do you evaluate your students okay non-example oh i test them all the time i test them every single friday every single friday it's loaded with tests i just test test tests i do a 60 question reading test followed by a 30 question long division math test and we just test all day on friday and there's no time for fun how i would answer this is i would absolutely bring up the many different types of assessment you have your formative assessment which is your quick checks you have your summative assessments which is after a unit or a chapter or and you can even have your assessments through uh kahoot through quizzes you can even have an assessment through a group project so i would answer that as depending on what we're learning and depending on what the objective is of the standard that will determine what kind of assessment i will be giving i like to give a lot of formative to make sure my students are on the right track during the lesson projects with group work towards the end of a chapter and of course a summative assessment when is necessary for benchmarks i personally love to give a lot of explain why this answer is wrong kind of assessments especially in math error analysis give exit tickets for assessment now also if i were you and what i will continue to do is when they ask how you will evaluate your students i will always say in the beginning of the lesson we read the i can statement lesson objective or the learning intention we always refer back to the learning objective that is always posted on the learning wall or the focus wall this is huge in education right now i've been in two different districts and they were huge on this just always referring to the learning objective and putting their learning objective and kid friendly terminology so they understand what they're learning so they can refer okay did i master this what are we learning why are we learning it so i would always always say having the learning objective posted having students read off of it in the beginning of the lesson towards the end of the lesson and referring to that objective while assessing students alright question number six what are your strengths as a teacher this question is something that you need to answer for yourself if you are interviewing i'm assuming you student taught i'm assuming you've been in the classroom so i would say just be very honest with yourself what is your strength i personally hate talking about myself i don't like it so these questions are always like to me give this an opportunity to have your strengths shine so whatever that is you could say i really care about my students and i um really love to dig deep in the curriculum so they understand the topics like you can say so much here question number seven what is your biggest weakness again i don't like answering questions directly about myself me how i always answer this sometimes i don't chunk and choose small enough sometimes i'm so excited for this lesson and i want to dive right into it however i forget that there needs to be some background knowledge there i would even say i my biggest weakness is i really really care i just want to do all these fun activities and sometimes i don't have time for everything sometimes i over plan in my day and it's really honest and i think in education if you're in the right place i mean we teach our kids all the time it's okay to make mistakes and it's okay to understand your mistakes and learn on that so when i talk about diving into a lesson and not giving enough background knowledge that's a perfect example of i'm learning as i'm teaching on example nothing i'm perfect okay question number eight one of my favorites how do you interact with parents i love this question i love this question i love this question so down below i have my tpt product of my behavior plan specifically what i do for behavior management and it incorporates parent communication i send home every single friday that parents sign and bring back so that's linked down below i also have a video corresponding to that link down below if you don't have a behavior plan or if you need to revamp your behavior plan you can check out what i'm doing i personally like it a lot non example oh uh i just wait for them to come to me i just wait for them to ask me how their kids are doing i'm sure they're not busy at all all right so how i would answer this question is i would absolutely bring up in the beginning of the year this is what i personally do i send home a parent homework on the first day of school asking for the parent to write me a little letter or write me a little note about their student about their child and their own perspective because i think that gives such a huge such huge input for me as a teacher a lot of good experience doing that and i've had a lot of parents appreciate that i do this so that's how i first start and i always give a welcome letter saying like we are a team we are working together for your child's education we are literally a team a teacher student parent admin school building janitor everyone is a so i would absolutely say i love to take a couple students a week and push time aside to call a parent and let the parent know how their student is doing and i love to give the positive reinforcement phone calls or the positive reinforcement emails out of nowhere sporadically and i think that's how we build really good parent on teacher communication and a bond i want us to be a team constantly reach out hey this is what we're doing can you help me with this this is what they need help in and just having that good communication with my friday sending notes home every every single friday i send notes home writing down what the student needs helping how they're doing just having that constant feedback will build the relationship higher or build the relationship more sturdy what is your classroom management plan please refer to my video down below all right here's an actual answer i gave as a non-example i'm gonna be strict but i'm gonna be fair about it uh so if you get this question which more than likely you will i would absolutely 100 percent say and refer to positive reinforcement constantly giving out those positive reinforcements in the class finding the student who's being an excellent role model and example calling them out and saying i love how you're doing this and really being explicit to what they're doing so that other students know how to act without pinpointing on a student not doing what they're supposed to when you give positive reinforcement it it's more positive and students will want to emulate that also in the beginning of the year i do a social contract i will link that video down below it will be down below on how i create my social contract it is directly um from ckh capturing kids hearts my district is a ckh school many districts are a ckh school if you are a cth school district you will be trained in this uh if you are not and you want to incorporate that it is down below my first district was not a ckh school i did incorporate it anyways and it helped a lot so always reform referring to our social contract that we all signed we all agree on is another form of positive um classroom culture and environment positive reinforcement and of course i would also say if students are not making the correct choices there is a list on my wall going step by step of the recourse if you're not um making the right choices in the classroom and those include a phone call home just so parents know how their child is acting and hopefully there can be support there um just always having that open dialogue with parents is essential question number 10 what do you like best about teaching you got to answer this one for yourself just be very honest question number 11 tell me about your teaching style not example i like to be the cool teacher i like to be the teacher where the students know they don't get in trouble and it's always sunshine and rainbows for me i like to walk around a lot i like to call on students a lot i love a lot of engagement i love a lot of lessons where i have students are actively engaged throughout the entire lesson i love a lot of whiteboards i love i love a lot of partner talk i love me less talky students more worky literally what i tell my students i just love a lot of interaction and i love a lot of partner talk and discussion and in order for me to have that type of teaching style just means i have to incorporate a lot of rules and expectations early on especially with partner talk it's really just your style so go wild with that one okay this question i have been asked and it kind of threw me for a loop so it was what book have you read recently to help you improve on being an educator number one thing i would say and will continue to say is wong first days of school every single teacher has heard of that book you probably have heard of that book if you haven't heard about that book please read it it's going to help you so much be especially if you're a first-year educator it's going to help you so much with your classroom management something i lacked my first year teaching and continue to lack a little bit my second year hopefully i'll be better at it my third year but it's a lot of practice and just reading through it is gonna help you a lot the book wong and wong first days of school have helped me so much in establishing my classroom rules and expectations because without classroom rules and expectations there will be no learning taking place because i will constantly have to redirect redirect redirect that's how it would answer that question number 13 how do you motivate students to learn you know even referring to this question right now that's a really hard question for me for me to answer that question and i'm really just like free balling here i would say how i get my students to learn is having a lot of data chats and having a lot of grade talks so what i mean by that is after an assessment or after any kind of project or whatever i love to have open dialogue with my students i love to pull them back at my desk or at my small group and we talk about it um i give us like once a month i talk about students grades with them we have that dialogue of what can you improve on like what do you need what do you think how can you improve in this um what do you think you can do better and i love to do that once a month i call it um data chats just having that dialogue and being like you know like you can do so good or like you're doing so well or you can do you think you can do better in this and just having them be a part of the dialogue is like game changer for me personally and i also with every good math test grade i give candy doesn't hurt question 14 we're almost there describe your worst day in class now just to answer this i will give a little i honestly if i were to answer this question i wouldn't like be very specific i would just say i was giving a lesson i was so excited about the lesson i'm teaching the lesson and it's kind of crashing and burning after self-reflecting at my lesson in the objective i noticed that i didn't give the students background knowledge so they had no idea what was happening um they didn't understand like what the topic was of the lesson and that was just an opportunity for me to grow as an educator and the importance of background knowledge that's how i would answer that another example i would say thinking about this and what i would almost say uh in an interview i would say on tuesdays is minimum days so on tuesday students do not have lunch recess they just eat and come to class and i was noticing that after lunch time my kids were pretty crazy they were acting all wild in the classroom we weren't getting as much work done as i would have liked and after self-reflecting use the word self-reflecting because all teachers in itself reflect all the time after self-reflecting i realized the students aren't getting lunch recess so they're act they're wild so now on tuesdays after lunch we go and play outside for 10 minutes just to get all the jitters out and so they can get the their talking out i can't imagine going to lunch eating and not being able to talk and chat with my friends they're bringing it into the classroom so i had to make the decision to take it out bring it back in get some work done so in that question i would really just talk about um what was your worst day and how did you fix it i would absolutely always give the solution to the problem here and i would use the keyword self-reflect question 15 how do you incorporate social emotional learning in your lesson i think in a lot of districts now don't quote me on this but i think in a lot of districts they are having a lot more social emotional curriculum incorporated into the school day so every tuesdays we had social emotional learning how you can also answer this question is um you can share good things in the morning which means you call a student they share something positive in their lives you can have a morning meeting if you don't know what that is there are plenty of resources online as long as well as a book that you can use i personally want to incorporate morning meeting next year something else i would incorporate next year that i'm working on is i'm going to have a binder where students can make an appointment to have lunch with me and we can discuss like any problems they're having if something's bothering them and just giving like a nice little counseling appointment for my students okay question number 16 how do you use technology in the classroom oh man you guys you can do this in so many different varieties if you are out of the credentialing program i'm sure you know this by now you can do formative assessments you can use smart board you can do um pear deck google classroom uh kahoot quizzes you can do all these things so really just pick your favorites you can even do plickers pick your favorites talk about them for this question for technology integration another good one that i always talk about in interviews because i've been on so many is i love to incorporate that i have my students create a google slide presentation and give a uh present they create a google slide presentation and they present it to the class and i pull speaking listing grades from that they use technology to create their presentation they can add uh like pictures and animations and make it their own and you can make that on any topic i love to do it before a break just to recap on what you learned in that semester especially at the end of school year we do a whole presentation on like what they learned in the year their favorite memories you can also make your own math problems doing this students can create their own math problems students can work on it and answer it you can do so many with this question number 17 how do you connect your lessons to real world okay i would answer this as right before i'm starting a lesson i always start my lesson with a hook now the hook could be anything it could be about me it could be about them it could be about anything on tv for example i love to have a sit down stand up sit down activity in the beginning for my hook so for one of my lessons we were learning about conservation and uh teddy roosevelt and his concert conservation efforts for the national parks so i had students sit up stand up if they had ever been to a national park i had students uh raise their hand telling me what parks they've been to telling the class and i just used this example because that was my observation but always connecting to something in their lives your life something that they can actually like hold on to and see i always pull sports involved whenever i can too question 18 we're almost done what are some methods you use for your checks for understanding now this is the specific type of how you check for understanding just to list off a couple you can walk around check in the work you can do whiteboard checks through test model or show me this show me that you can absolutely do partner talk now while students are using partner talk you are walking around listening you have a clipboard you can make notes you can do so many methods for checks for understanding uh my favorite is partner talk and whiteboards and of course equity sticks this is a non example well at the end of a really hard math lesson i allow my students to give me a thumbs up if they understand sideway thumbs if they kind of understand in a thumbs down if they don't understand because i know my students are going to be 100 truthful and not care what their parents think peers think about them i actually i had an admin tell me that's not a very good way a formative assessment because students you know aren't really honest all the time because they care about what their peers think so i would always do checks for understanding off what i hear and what i see of the students work all right question number 19 what can you contribute to your school's plc professional learning committee now if you're a new teacher more than likely you will have a plc and all that means is you come together as a grade level and you plan together you look at assessments together you figure out what you guys can improve on all of this you will be trained if you have not already how i would answer this is i love getting together with my colleagues figuring out lessons ideas lesson ideas because i may not be so strong in a subject but my co-teacher can be and we can come together and create a really good common assessment and just create really good um lesson instruction and just be a really awesome team always analyzing the data going off what the data says and just catering to our students needs obviously a non-example oh um i like to work alone all right and last question do you have any questions for me so i always go in the interview with a pen and a notepad always always always always because during this question i always ask now this could be like a no-no but this is just what i do i always say if you were to walk into my classroom what would you like to see what would you want to see well depending on their answer tells me a lot about the district so i like to write that down and hearing what they say just tells me what is most important for their district so for example i had a district tell me oh i love partner work i love students who are sitting in groups and working together and using a lot of partner talk so that tells me okay they like a lot of partner talk i also always always ask what is the next step or what is the next step for me or something like that just what's the when will i hear follow up i always ask that i have no shame i need to know uh now that could be a no-no but i just do it so whatever okay you guys so there are 21 interview questions that you may be asked or that i have been asked and hopefully this video was very helpful for you let me know if you guys got the job if you're applying for a job and getting the job i wish you guys luck don't stress like really think about all the positions open and all the schools it's gonna be fine just don't stress walk into the interview feeling like a professional feel like a million bucks and you'll be fine don't stress about it and of course like have proper etiquette all right you guys if you liked the video please give me a thumbs up leave me comments down below and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future videos and i'll catch you guys in my next one

Channel: High Vibe Teaching

Views: 66,868

Rating: 4.8879609 out of 5

Keywords: education

Id: aVVbxOAbAB4

Length: 30min 16sec (1816 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 05 2020