DeSoto Parish Interview Question Pool
12/6/11
Instruction:
Teaching is the critical interactive work that teachers undertake when they bring complex content to life
for students. What is your process for engaging students to ensure that ALL students are mastering the
content?
Give a specific example of how you have integrated your content with other disciplines.
How do you systematically elicit diagnostic information from individual students regarding their
understanding and monitoring of their progress?
Instruction
How would you describe a developmentally appropriate curriculum?
Can you briefly detail what a 45 minute lesson would look like in your class?
Instruction
1.
What challenges have you faced with instruction? How did you address these challenges?
2.
How do you address various learning styles of students in your classroom?
Instruction
1.
What challenges have you faced with instruction? How did you address these challenges?
2.
How do you address various learning styles of students in your classroom?
Instruction:
How do you teach ( their subject)? How do you make it meaningful?
Tell me about a lesson that didn’t go so well? Why did it fail? What would you do differently if you had
to?
Instruction
1. Describe a successful lesson you have taught from beginning to end.
2. Describe strategies that you use which facilitate learning across diverse ability levels and learning
styles.
Instruction:
1.
Why is it important to connect the learning objectives to what students have previously
learned?
2.
Discuss the importance of modeling by the teacher to demonstrate performance expectations.
INSTRUCTION
•
Besides lecture, what methods of teaching do you use?
•
Tell us about a lesson in which you've used differentiated instruction
DeSoto Parish Interview Question Pool
12/6/11
Designing and Planning Instruction:
How do you organize the content of lessons so that it is meaningful and relevant to students?
How do you design your lessons to ensure that ALL students are engaged in significant learning?
How do you ensure that instructional outcomes, learning activities, materials/resources, and
assessments are in complete alignment with GLEs, benchmarks, content standards, and are adapted, as
needed, for the individual needs of students?
Designing and Planning instruction
What are the components of a quality --------- education program? How would you prioritize these
components, along with giving justification for your choices?
How do you provide for individual differences in your class?
Designing and Planning Instruction
1.
What examples of engaging projects/activities have you done before that were successful with
student learning? Why?
What about any that were not as successful, how did you address those?
2.
What would your daily schedule look like in your classroom?
Designing and Planning Instruction
1.
How can you determine if students will be successful prior to the end of the year?
2.
How do you plan? How do you approach long term planning?
Designing ad Planning instruction:
How do you plan? How do you approach long-term planning? How about short-term planning?
How do assessments fit into your overall lesson planning?
Designing and Planning Instruction
1. How do you decide what is to be taught from day to day?
2. Discuss the importance of planning for instruction and describe the elements of an effective lesson
plan.
Designing and Planning Instruction:
1.
How can one plan effectively for instruction that provides opportunities to accommodate
individual differences?
2.
Discuss three ways an instructor can measure student performance
DESIGNING AND PLANNING INSTRUCTION
•
How do you use technology to enrich your lessons?
•
Most classes have students with a wide-range of reading abilities. What can you do to meet the
needs of students with high reading abilities and low reading abilities at the same time?
DeSoto Parish Interview Question Pool
12/6/11
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
•
How do you measure student performance in your classroom?
•
If I walked into your classroom on a typical afternoon, what would I see going on?
Learning Environment:
1.
How do teacher/student interactions impact the learning environment?
2.
Is there a positive correlation between the display of student work and motivation of students?
Discuss
Learning Environment:
1. Describe teacher behaviors, both verbal and nonverbal, that contribute to an effective learning
environment.
2. Discuss how the physical elements in your classroom can be arranged to best promote an effective
learning environment.
Learning Environment:
If I walked into your classroom and you were in the midst of a successful lesson, what would I see?
Should all students be held to the same standards as highest-performing students in the class?
Learning Environment
1.
If I walked into your classroom and you were in the middle of a successful lesson, what would I
see?
2.
How would you differentiate in your classroom for students performing on different levels?
Learning Environment
1.
If I walked into your classroom and you were in the midst of a lesson, what would I see?
2.
Tell me about your classroom environment. How do you prepare your classroom for learning?
Learning Environment
Our parents are very active and involved in the education of their children.
How will you work towards quality communication and dialogue with the parents?
How do you measure success as a teacher? What kind of impact do you want to have on students? In
what ways have you had this type of impact on students in the past?
The Learning Environment
What is the correlation between setting high expectations for students and the selection of challenging
materials and activities?
Describe an “ideal culture for learning” in a typical classroom?
DeSoto Parish Interview Question Pool
12/6/11
Classroom Management
How do you handle discipline problems? What are your classroom management strategies?
What are your classroom management strategies? What do you do to minimize discipline problems?
Classroom Management
1.
Why are you interested in teaching at _______?
2.
How would you describe your classroom management style?
Classroom Management
1.
How would you describe your classroom management style?
2.
What will you do if 10 students always follow the rules and procedures and the other 20 don’t?
Classroom management:
What are classroom procedures-what happens the first or last 15 of class? What happens when the
students don’t follow these procedures?
How would you describe your classroom management style?
Classroom Management:
1. Describe classroom rules, routines and procedures that are effective in maximizing instructional time
and reducing student misbehavior.
2. Describe a continuum of interventions or consequences that are appropriate for addressing repeated
student misbehavior.
Classroom Management:
1.
Discuss how the lesson structure and pacing impacts student behavior.
2.
Discuss techniques you have used to maintain appropriate student behaviors.
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
•
How would you create a behavior modification for a student with ongoing behavior problems?
•
What daily or weekly routines would be incorporated in your teaching?
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1.
What is that one common classroom management technique that you would suggest to all your
fellow teachers to adapt and one that you'd want them to discard?
2.
How do you organize your classroom?
3.
You must have come across times when students misbehave in class. How do you manage
inappropriate behavior by students?
4.
Define cooperative learning and give an example of how you have used it.
5.
Describe your teaching style.
6.
How do you handle the different ability levels of students? How do you help a student who is
having difficulty?
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DeSoto Parish Interview Question Pool
12/6/11
SAMPLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
1) Please share with us about your background experiences and what you think makes you a strong
candidate for our _________ position.
2) We are a TAP School – System for Student and Teacher Advancement. Are you familiar with TAP? If
not, share information: (ongoing, applied professional growth through weekly job-embedded cluster
meetings and follow up support in the classroom, performance based compensation based on multiple
measures including student achievement gains and teachers’ instructional practices, instructional
focused accountability through multiple observations using a research-based instrument and rubric that
identifies effective teaching practices, multiple career paths for educators as career, mentor and master
teachers)
In our school, we are in our ____year of TAP implementation and we have seen very positive gains in
student achievement and overall instructional improvement because of the commitment of our faculty
to this school reform model. It involves four formal classroom observations per year for each teacher
with feedback and planning for professional growth. These observations are conducted by
administrators, and master and mentor teachers. TAP helps us to become the best we can be by giving
us a model for teacher effectiveness and opportunities to learn research-based teaching strategies that
have been field- tested and shown to be successful with our student population. Do you think you would
benefit from this program aimed at improving each teacher’s instructional effectiveness? How do you
feel about the number of observations you would receive? What are your thoughts about the weekly
cluster meetings with colleagues where data is analyzed, instructional practices are studied, and plans
for improving student achievement are made?
3) How have you in the past (or what would you do as a new teacher) to ensure that your students were
advancing academically and mastering required grade level expectations?
4) If you have been teaching for two months, and you notice that over half of your students were
having trouble achieving, what would you do? If after three months, you still have one-third of the
students in your class struggling, what additional measures would you take?
5) If I walked into your classroom and you were in the middle of teaching a successful lesson, what
would I see? What would closure look like?
6) How do you reflect on a lesson you taught and decide whether or not it was effective?
7) We are extremely fortunate in DeSoto Parish to have “state of art” technology in our classrooms.
Most are equipped with a Smart board, slate, document camera, and student response system, as well
as a computer for the teacher and center for students containing five or more computer stations. Do
you have experience with these tools? How do you integrate technology for student use into your daily
instruction?
8) How do you describe your classroom management style?
9) When you have discipline problems, what are the steps of action you take? When would you involve
the parents? When would you involve the administration?
DeSoto Parish Interview Question Pool
12/6/11
10) It is important that we work to form a strong connection with our parents and community
members. What are some ways that you as a teacher can support this process?
11) As part of our outreach to parents and our community, we have several evening events each year
(approximately 7-8) such as parent workshops, progress report nights, school improvement meetings,
family activities, etc.
We also have faculty meetings after school several times per month. Can you commit to these events
involving extended hours? (I realize this one is school specific, but it is important to ask a question of
this kind.)
12) What inspires you as a teacher? How do you inspire your students to learn?
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l. Tell us why you would be an asset to a high-achieving and highly-motivated staff of educators like
North DeSoto Middle School?
2. What does a typical day in your classroom look like?
3. You recently received an out-of-state student who is lacking previous skills in order to master current
objectives in your content area. What strategies would you implement in order to bridge the gap? How
would you differentiate your instruction to meet this student’s needs?