Interview Practice!

I was able to get in some interview practice with the Administrators at Selinsgrove High School.  Both the principal, Mr. Parise and Assistant principal Mr. Roman conducted my interview prior to school beginning a few weeks ago.  Overall, the interview went great and I was able to walk away with a lot of great tips and pointers for next time.

1. Mr. Parise and Mr. Roman have a go to list of questions that they use for preliminary interviews and I was asked those same questions.

• First off, tell us a little about yourself and why you were drawn to teach this subject?  
• Can you tell us your policy on cell phones in your classroom?  
• How would you incorporate technology into your instruction?  
• What experiences have you had to help you become the teacher that you are today?  
• What do you believe to be your strongest characteristic while teaching?  
• What do you believe is your weakest characteristic while teacher or where you need the most improvement?
• What would you do the curriculum and your lessons to modify them for all types learners?
• What would a hybrid class look like for an agriculture class?  
• Talk about the types of assessments that you implement in your lessons?

2. I do feel that I was well prepared for these specific questions.  I feel that these were questions that I could pull from my experiences to answer.  The only question that I was not sure how to answer was the one about the hybrid class.  I was not sure what they were calling a hybrid class so I first had to get some clarification on exactly what they see a hybrid class as.  

3. A lot of the questions I had for my administrators were about how I did during the interview which we talked about after the "formal" part was done.  However, during the interview I only asked two questions:

• What is the biggest characteristic you look for in a great candidate?  
• If a candidate brings a portfolio to the interview, is there a better chance of them to get the position?  

4. I was impressed in how calm I kept myself during the interview as well as how well I answered the questions.  I though that the interview would be much harder and intimidating however, it was very relaxed and it was like we were just having a conversation about teaching.  

5. I don't know that there was anything that didn't impress me about the interview process.  We did do it kind of spur of the moment so I didn't have everything with me for the interview such as my portfolio or copy of my resume so I wish that I myself was more prepared for the process. 

6.  I think that my weakest aspect of an interview is when I have the opportunity to ask questions.  I never really have any that I want to ask in the moment; I always think of them like an hour later.  I need to get a list of good questions that I could use at any school but I also need to find some that are specific to the school I am applying to.  I also think that I could use some work on the vocabulary and buzz words of the teaching world.  For example, I wasn't 100% sure what a hybrid class was during this interview.  I need to make sure exactly what the difference is between flipped, hybrid, homebound as well as many others.