Considering a Jewish Education

Most of us job seekers don't have very much experience with interviews. I know that from my many years of being one of those people who interviewed applicants for positions at the firm I worked for back then. It was always obvious to me which candidates had prepared for their interviews, and which had not.

Personally, I remember being in the same boat myself. As I recall, I was unhappy with the position I held. Honestly, I cannot remember the reasons why I was unhappy, but I started looking for a new job. I emailed my resume replying to a couple of openings and managed to land an interview for one of them. I never prepared for the interview. I simply turned up and winged it. I just assumed that my resume would show who I was and what I offered. How wrong I was! It was the worst interview experience I have ever had. I had no clue about what the job entailed or what questions to ask. Now, since I don't want you to have a similar experience, let's review some of the things which you can do to prepare for your successful job interview at a private school.

What kind of questions will be asked?

I know that the title of this article is Asking Good Questions. So, you are probably asking yourself why questions which the interviewer will ask are relevant. Good question! The interviewer's questions are relevant because you can use

Many school districts have cut teaching positions.

It has been hard to avoid hearing reports in both national and local media about cutbacks in public school district teaching staffs. Public school districts depend on real estate taxes for most of their revenues. They also expect their state legislatures to contribute additional funding. However, these traditional sources of revenue have been shrinking at an alarming rate. Even with the usual kind of accounting maneuvers, such as delaying expenditures for maintenance projects and upgrades of systems and infrastructure, school districts still find themselves in the uncomfortable and extremely unpopular position of having to cut teaching positions. Increasing class size is another outcome of these financially hard times.

As a result, thousands of teachers are actively looking for jobs. TMarket conditions have intensified the competition for the limited number of jobs available in both the public and private school sectors.

Colleges and universities have reduced their teaching staffs.

A quick scan of Inside Higher Ed will reveal the tough employment environment in higher education. If you are tenured faculty, hopefully, you still have a job. But many colleges

Congratulations! You managed to land a place on the interview list. That's significant because interviewing candidates is time-consuming. The school has little time to waste. Now is the time for you to make the best possible impression. Accomplishing that means answering many questions during the interview.

Part of any private school interview process is answering questions that you know will be asked. Having said that, you need to prepare for your interviews with the same care and attention as you give your lesson plans. Think through the entire interview. Imagine the questions being asked. Imagine your answers. Remember: not only does the content have to be the best it possibly can be, but the style and delivery you use must present you in the best possible light.

Some of the more obvious questions include:

• Why do you want to work at St. Swithin's?
• Why do you want to leave St. Hilda's?
• What is the most enjoyable part of your teaching day?
• What books have you read lately?
• When do you plan to finish your master's degree?

Regardless of what the actual questions are or the precise wording is, you must try to figure out why the interviewer is asking the question in the first place. Let's use the questions listed above to give you an idea of the sort of thing an interviewer might be looking for.

Why do you want to work at St. Swithin's?

This question or some variation of it generally is used by interviewers to determine what you know about

Three early childhood education approaches enjoy great popularity in the United States and indeed throughout the world. They all had their origins in the teaching of European society's poorest, most disadvantaged children. To understand the changes which Dr. Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, and Reggio Emilia founder, Loris Malaguzzi, wrought on the European educational system back at the beginning of the 20th century, we need to know how children were educated at that time. The prevailing methodology used drills and memorization. Children's minds were considered to be small versions of adult minds which needed to be expanded with knowledge. Rather than letting children explore and discover on their own, as we all know they are quite capable of doing, teachers filled their minds full of facts. Retention was achieved by drills and memorization. Teaching a child how to think was an ancillary objective if indeed it was an objective at all. Furthermore, most children finished their classroom instruction at age 10 or 11.

Montessori, Steiner, and Malaguzzi believed in the intrinsic abilities and capabilities of children. Their approaches, philosophies, and methods had a single, common purpose: to produce a better society in which human beings would respect each other and live in harmony and peace.

In America, these three educational approaches took root not in the poorest segments of society but in a middle and upper class eager to have something better than what was offered in the public school systems. Here is a comparison of the main features of the