Some friendly advice.....

It's spring...and with that brings: flowers, rain, tests and yes interviews. I'm pretty sure I won't be moving schools, but if I were, I would follow the advice that was given on The PrincipalsPage blog. He laid out, exactly what not do and hopefully we'll do our best to not do them.

I did have the fortune of interviewing some teachers to fill an open spot earlier this year, and that was something else. Here's what I learned what not to do from that experience....

1) Show up early - I'm not talking about camping out, like those shoppers do on Black Friday. Instead show up 15 min early, just to show that you care about this interview and that your priorities are set. Waiting for someone to show up after school is hard....especially since we all have other things that we could be doing.

2) Be honest, but not too honest - Time and place, time and place....TIME AND PLACE. There is a time and place to talk about your stance on drug use, politics, and religion. It's a good idea to not bring up this stuff on your next interview.

3) Do your homework - No not that kind of homework (but do that too) I'm talking about actually using the internet to use and start checking out the school's website. Know the names of the principal and the school's demographics and try to come up with how and why you would be an asset to them. More importantly, when it's time for you to ask some questions you actually have something decent to ask other than...."when's lunch?".

If you do this you're chances of landing that teaching job will increase just a bit. Just don't ask about sending in your resume.

Skype for students

This post was inspired by wesley fryer, who wrote about how Tammy is utilizing Skype into her classroom to interview other students in national organizations across the United States. Students are actually able to interact and engage in meaningful projects.

I love this idea, and I think the uses of Skype in the classroom are endless. Working in an elementary setting, you'll just need to be a bit creative in how you find meaningful uses. You could do a class interview with a class across the state/country/world. You could do interviews of people who work in different job sectors or simply interview someone who has done something or seen something significant.

I'm looking forward to getting stated with this and hopefully you are too. Let me know how you're adventures with Skype are going.


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