SAMPLE TEACHER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Curriculum / Subject Knowledge

• If you were hired to teach starting this September, how would you go about setting up your reading program?
• What reading programs do you have experience with? What do you like or dislike about them?
• How would you decide on groups in mathematics?
• Do you prefer homogeneous or heterogeneous grouping? Why?
• What do you understand the inquiry method to be in science or social sciences?
• What does individualized teaching mean to you?
• How can you tell students are learning? Evaluation techniques?
• How would you individualize the learning process in your classroom?
• Name some ways that a student in a group can show you he has the concept?
• In which curriculum area do you feel particularly strong?
• What goals do you hope to achieve in your subject?
• If you were asked to get in-service experience in one area of the curriculum, which area would you choose?
• What are the various ways for materials to be presented to students such as in social science?
• Describe what diagnostic and proscriptive learning means?

Classroom Management

• How would you go about setting standards at the beginning of the year?
• How do you get students to do what you want them to do? Describe your system of classroom management.
• How do you get students to develop in self-discipline? Can you teach this?
• Who should be responsible for the discipline in the school?
• If you have a student disrupting your classroom, what steps would you take to solve this problem?
• What is your attitude towards individual vs. total class punishment?
• Compare negative and positive reinforcement and describe effects of each.
• Describe an elementary child (junior high/senior high) at a grade level of your choosing-- his personality, study habits or attitude toward learning and behavior characteristics.
• What steps would you take to get a student who has been tardy to be more punctual?
• What would I expect to see in your classroom's physical environment?

Parent Relations / Communications

• Describe some ways you can inform parents of what is going on in your classroom.
• Tell me some ways you would involve parents in your classroom.
• How do you let parents know the progress of their child?
• In your opinion, how effective are parent conferences in solving student problems?
• Imagine that you replace a teacher during the year. Describe how you would become acquainted with parents and students.
• What would you tell a parent who complained about his/her child not having enough homework?

Personality /Personal Attitudes / Professionalism

• Why do you want to teach? Describe an “ideal” teacher.
• Why do you want to teach in our School District?
• What is wrong with education today? What is right?
• What do you expect from the school principal, psychologist and superintendent?
• What would you say if your first grade student asked if there really was a Santa Claus?
• Describe what your closest teaching associate would say about your getting along with adults? With children?
• What are the greatest teaching strengths you would bring to a teaching position?
• If you have yard duty and the teacher that relieves you is constantly late, what would you do?
• Why should you be selected for this position rather than someone else?
• What were you hoping we would ask you but didn’t?
• What talents do you bring to this position?
• If your friend was describing you, what three adjectives/descriptive phrases would he/she use to describe you both personally and professionally?
• What do you believe is the major purpose of teacher evaluation?
• What are some personality characteristics you find unbearable in people?
• You have heard students complaining constantly about another teacher. What would you do?

Typical Questions asked on a Certificated Questionnaire

All certificated applicants must complete this questionnaire in order to be considered for employment. The following questions are a very important part of the screening process. Please reflect upon them carefully, and give your candid responses on a separate sheet of paper. 

• What are your three most important reasons for wanting to be a teacher? 
• How much do you want to know about your students in order to be most helpful to them? 
• What three things do you most want to know about your students? 
• What do you need to know in order to begin your lesson planning for a class? 
• What four key components do you believe you must include in your plan? 
• When you think about your students, in what major ways do you most want to influence their lives? 
• What two core teaching strategies do you most use to achieve this result?

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This document is maintained by: Kathleen Bristow (kbristow@csuchico.edu)
Last Updated: November 25, 2007