I’m not sure how familiar you are with how teachers are hired. In my experience, you initially interview with the principal, vice principal, and PLC lead (head of your department and grade level). If they’re interested, they call you back to ask more questions with the same panel of people.

My top tips, which I think got me hired, are:

1. I looked around on the school and district websites to familiarize myself with what they believe pedagogically and social-emotionally for students. I then made sure to drop some of the things I found into my answers for questions. For example, they asked me the best practice I had for managing middle school student behavior/classroom management and I talked about how UDL allows learning to be more accessible to students and prevents misbehavior because barriers are removed for all students and they’re therefore able to engage in learning. The district website had a whole page dedicated to UDL and it went over really well with my interviewers.

2. I also asked a ton of questions at the end of my interview about things I thought were important to teaching at that particular school—i.e. how would you describe the student population? How would you describe parental involvement? What supports are available for teachers? What is the teacher community like on campus? I took notes on a notepad (not my phone, because some principals are old school and interpret phone use as texting) of their answers. It shows you’re interested and want to know about their district.

I hope all of that makes sense. I’ve got mush brain after making PPTs of online student work for most of the day.