Job Seeker Alert – Lowered Price of Book

In recent weeks the number of visitors and their emails have been flowing in.  Mostly these are aspiring teachers and job seekers, preparing for an interview or looking for strategies to land a teacher job.  Of course, the teacher interview page, receiving over 200 daily visits alone, and the numerous blog posts are a big hit.

Good news! To further help, I have lowered the price of the e-version of Road to Teaching: A Guide to Teacher Training, Student Teaching, and Finding a Job to $5.49 .  This is a fantastic resource for any job seeker looking for a teacher job, especially in light of the tough job market.  This price reduction is 27% off the original e-version and 61% off the Amazon.com print version.

This offer will only last until end of April.  I hope you will use this book and Road to Teaching’s online resources to help in landing your perfect teacher job.

Good luck on the job search!!!!

–Eric

Plethora of Resources for Future and Student Teachers

I wrote the following post on Edubloggers – a group for those people blogging about the K12 classroom including teachers, administrators, curriculum directors, professional developers, pre-service teachers, and college level educators who focus on k12 education.:

Please share with me websites or resources that would be helpful to future and preservice teachers. I am the site author of roadtoteaching.com – a free site that supports pre-service teachers.

Here are the responses:

1. http://www.abcte.org – non-profit that helps people get certified to teach through an online program – we have $150 off in January as a promotion for people who want to get certified
   http://www.charterteacher.com – help for future charter teachers
   http://www.newteacherhotline.com – podcast for new and aspiring teachers
2. New Teacher Center: http://www.newteachercenter.org – Since 1998, the New Teacher Center has served over 49,000 teachers and 5,000 mentors, touching millions of students across the country through comprehensive mentoring and professional development programs.
3. http://www.cashforcreations.com – Educational Visual Aids, where teachers get paid for their original ideas of educational visual aids. Teachers can find other visual aids that teachers have used that have worked for them in their classrooms.
4. I have a message board for pre-service and new teachers and answer questions about curriculum, organization, classroom management, working with parents, colleagues, administrators, etc. on scholastic.com. Advice is free. 🙂
   http://community.scholastic.com/scholastic/board?board.id=emergency
5. A few more ideas: for parental involvement, especially with the growing Latino student population, try Colorin Colorado at www.colorincolorado.org. On my LinkedIn profile page there is a list of sites specifically for improving parental involvement. Another idea is Teachers Pay Teachers at www.teacherspayteachers.com. It contains a lot of inexpensive resources that will benefit new teachers. I also suggest connecting with professional learning communities like edWeb at www.edweb.net. Good luck!

RESOURCES

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Teacher Interview Question – Tell Me About Yourself

Stop and think before you answer this question.  The interviewers really don’t want to hear your life story or the names of all your 20 cats.  Rather what they are listening for is how well you will fit into the school, work with your colleagues, and relate to your students.

Talk about yourself and 1-2 life experience, but ALWAYS tie it back to how it will help you in teaching. 

For example:

“I would describe myself as adventurous and outgoing.  Last year I traveled throughout Southeast Asia, traveling to four countries.  I love learning about new cultures and meeting new people.  This is one of the reasons I want to teach at {insert school name}.  It has amazing diversity.  I would take this same enthusiam and apply it to learning more about my students and their backgrounds.”

Have Your Hand at Answering Teacher Interview Questions

We need you!  Try your hand at answering any of the teacher interview questions.  We will then post your answer by linking it to the teacher interview question you choose.

Everyday hundreds of pre-service teachers and other job seekers visit Road to Teaching’s Teacher Interview Question page – the largest collection of teacher interview questions on the web.  This is a free resource, maintained by a teacher.  So, with your help we could turn this to the web’s largest collection of teacher interview questions with ANSWERS!

Feel free to email your question and answer to eric [at] roadtoteaching [dot] com.  Alternatively, you can simply leave a comment to this post or comment on the teacher interview question page.  We will extract your Q&A and make the link.

Please help us expand the usefulness of Road to Teaching.

Teacher Interview Question: How can Assessment Improve Student Learning?

Assessment is a powerful tool to improve student achievement.  Rather than treat assessment as an end result, teachers should incorporate assessments as part of the learning process, allowing both teacher and student to monitor progress and evaluate news ways to improve.   A teacher can accomplish this by
1.       Clearly defining the learning target/objective
2.       Showing student work
3.       Delivery pre-assessments to understand students’ prior knowledge and to create a baseline
4.       Continually assess students’ progress and providing effective feedback on how to improve.
5.       Teach students to self-assess and reflect on their quality of work and achievement of targeted objective.
 
If time permits provide an example of how you used assessment as part of the learning process.

Teacher Hiring is Frozen in Some Districts

We can’t get through the day with0ut hearing about the economy.  Well, the bad economy has impacted education, specifically teacher hiring.  In some districts, hiring has been frozen.  Why?  Districts have no money for new hires or they are waiting to see how the stimulus money will trickle down from the the federal level to the state level to eventually the district level.  This weekend I spoke with a principal who said his hands are tied.  He can’t move on any hiring until this summer (when the District will release their budget).  This is extremely frustrating to principals who tend to want to wrap up their teacher hirings in April and May.  Its even more frustrating to aspiring teachers (job applicants) who are wondering when they will get an interview.

I asked the principal what his advice is to those teacher job applicants.  His advice was to ” keep being persistant.”  Here are some other ideas:

• Arrange to visit the school
• Talk with the school’s teachers
• Get (keep) your face and name out there
• Learn how to get your foot in the school door (read Road to Teaching: A Guide to Teacher Training, Student Teaching, and Finding a Job) 
• Read other teacher interview/hiring strategies (Student teacher topics)
• Don’t give up!!!

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Administrators Turn to Behavior-Based Interview Questions

I just returned from a workshop that taught school administrators how to use behavior-based interview (BBI) question to hire quality teachers.  The basic idea behind BBI is that the candidate’s past behavior will be the best indicator for future behavior.  BBI has been around for years, but used primarily in business.

A BBI question may start something like:

• Tell me about a time…
• Describe your experience with…
• How have you…
• What has been your approach to…

Does BBI sound intimidating?  It doesn’t have to be.  There are two great ways to frame each BBI question you are asked.

PAR – Problem, Action, and Result

STAR – Situation/Task, Action, and Result

For every question asked, first describe the problem (e.g. keeping 6th graders on-task) or situation/task (e.g. organizing curriculum).  Then, explain what action you took.  Finally, describe the end result, trying to always tie into improving student learning.  Just remember PAR or STAR when answering BBI questions and you should do just fine!

Check the Teacher Interview Questions page at for sample BBI questions.

For additional information on BBI, visit http://jobsearch.about.com/cs/interviews/a/behavioral.htm

5 Tips on How to Master the Phone Interview

Below are 5 tips from Hubpages on How to Master the Phone Interview.  Check out the link to learn more.

#1: Be Available

#2: No Cell Phones

#3: Research Company

#4: Be Prepared

#5: Put Your Best “Phone Voice” Forward

Resources

http://hubpages.com/hub/masterthephoneinterview

ST Question – How does a couple sell themselves without seeming pushing or making their interviewer nervous?

“Both my husband and I are getting certified now (in the same subject) and will both be looking for jobs during the Summer 2009 hiring season.  Are there any articles or advice for those that will be looking for two jobs, not just one? In some countries its normal for employers to ask about your spouse’s situation when you interview for a job, but in America that’s against the law of course.  We think our situation would be an asset to most schools, but how does a couple “sell themselves” on this without seeming pushing or make their interviewer nervous? For example, should we go to job fair booths together, or make our rounds separately? Other teaching couples I know weren’t looking for jobs in the same hiring season, were certified in different subjects, or simply didn’t get married until they were both out of school.”

– Student Teacher

Click on comments for responses

Please email your student teacher questions to eric@road2teaching.com.

Preparation for a Teacher Interview

It is likely that you may have extended your job search outside schools and districts that you are familiar with. If offered an interview at one of these schools understand that you are already at a disadvantage. You may not be as knowledgeable about the school and students as another job candidate that student taught there. In my book, Road to Teaching, I offer some strategies to maximize your knowledge of the community, school, and, most importantly, the students before heading into your interview. Acknowledging time is of the essence, here are some quick tips to better prepare for your interview:

If you have only a day before the interview…

• Conduct on-line research of the community. A great resource for this is Yahoo’s Real Estate website. This will give you a good overview of the socio-economic and ethnic picture of the neighborhood.
• Visit the school’s website. Read everything, especially if the school posts a newsletter for parents. This will give you insight into the various changes/reforms happening.
• Review the school’s test scores. Check out School Matters for this. This will show the strength and areas of improvement in student achievement. Think of how your experience, skills sets, and professional training will improve student learning in these areas.

If you have a few days before the interview…

• Do everything mentioned above.
• Send an email to your teacher friends, explaining that you have an interview, and ask for their insight on the school for which you applied.
• Go to a cafe near the school. Observe and casually talk with people there.
• Drive around the school and local community. Plus, this will alleviate stress of trying to find the school on the day of your interview.

Hopefully, these are some ideas to get you started on preparing for your teacher interview. I will post these links on the website, under the link category Getting a Teacher Job, for future reference.

Also, thank you to everyone sending in teacher interview questions. Please keep them coming. In the last few days, we have doubled the number of teacher interview questions. Additionally, I broke down the general teacher interview questions into more specific categories, e.g. classroom management, discipline, professional development, etc