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1. You are being interviewed for the position of English Teacher
in ____________ School. What strengths do you bring to this position
and to this subject area?
2. Why bother to teach literature? What difference does it make
these days?
3. Given an eight week time period just for writing, what kind
of writing course would you develop?
4. We have some students in this school who don't speak "standard
English." How will you work with these students?
5. As a teacher/parent, I want my students/child to get the basic
skills. How will you be a teacher who knows and teaches the basics?
6. As a parent/department chairman, I have concerns about classroom
management, how will you maintain order in your English classroom.
7. I know most people think that once you're out of elementary
school, that you don't have to teach reading, but I think reading
should be taught. How would you teach reading?
8. I see from your resume that you have had some experience in
teaching/tutoring, can you talk about how that experience will
better enable you to teach at our school?
9. You've talked about the strengths you have which will enable
you in this position, would you talk about a weakness that you
have as a future English teacher, and how you might change that
weakness into a strength.
10. Is there a metaphor for teaching that will guide you in your
work as a middle or high school teacher?
11. How would you handle student or parent objection to the material
that you have presented in class?
12. What is the difference between mechanics, grammar, and usage?
How will you treat these different aspects of language study in
your class?
13. What is your understanding of and experience with the Minnesota
High
Standards documents? What do you think about the other Minnesota
mandates about multi-cultural and gender-fair curriculum? How
will
you implement them?
14. How will you work with students who are culturally different?
15. How would you incorporate technology in your classroom?
16. Besides being an English teacher in this school, what extracurricular
role(s) would you be willing to take on?
17. What means of assessment do you prefer to use with your student'
work? What is your experience with performance packages?
18. Our school mainstreams students, how can you, as a teacher,
accommodate a variety of special education students?
SRI Perceiver Questions
(often asked at the application or interview stage of the hiring
process)
1. What do you want to accomplish as a teacher?
2. How will you go about finding out about students' attitudes
and feelings about your class?
3. An experienced teacher offers you the following advice: "When
you are teaching, be sure to command the respect of your students
immediately and all will go well." How do you feel about
this?
4. How do you determine what it is that should be taught in your
class?
5. A parent comes to you and complains that what you are teaching
his/her child is irrelevant to the child's needs. How would you
respond?
6. What do you think will provide you the greatest pleasure in
teaching?
7. When you have some free time, what do you enjoy doing most?
8. How do you determine your students' areas of strength?
9. Would you continually attempt different teaching strategies
or try to perfect the approaches that work best for you? (Another
version: Would you rather try a lot of way-out teaching strategies
or would you rather try to perfect the approaches which work best
for you? Explain your position.)
10. Do you like to teach with an overall plan in mind for the
year, or would you rather just teach some interesting things and
let the process determine the results? Explain your position.
11. A student is doing poorly in your class. You talk to her,
and she tells you that she considers you to be the poorest teacher
she has ever met. What would you do?
Prospective teachers can choose to apply to one of three schools:
River Locks Community School: This is a combined junior and senior high school in the rural mid-west. About 5% of the students go on to college. There are 400 students in the school (grades 7-12) and four English teachers. The school does have a vocational program that is coordinated with one of the larger regional high schools in the area. The students take history and English at River Locks in the morning and then travel thirty miles to the vocational school for the rest of the day. There is also a class especially designed for the school's small, college preparatory group which includes both juniors and seniors. The English position that is open will be either for the vocational English classes or the college preparatory English classes depending on the wishes of the applicant.
Rolvaag Memorial High School: This school is located in the center of a small city in the mid-west. The school draws students from 1)the city's minority and immigrant population located in the center of the city, 2) a working class population located to the east of the school, and 3) an upper middle class population to the west of the school. The committee is searching for three positions. One includes teaching of the school's journalism course and the advisorship to the school newspaper. The second position includes advisement of the school yearbook. The third position is a combination speech/drama/English position which includes service as a debating coach or drama coach. Each position includes an extra stipend for its extracurricular component.
Homedale Middle School: This school is located in an upper middle class suburb of a fairly large midwest city. The school is rich with resources and the class size is under 20. The parents are involved and concerned about school matters. They want their children to have the basics, plus. Most of the children will go on to college.
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