Your Job Search Is Taking Forever

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

Reggio Emilia is an approach to early childhood education which originated in Italy after World War II. While not as widely known as the Montessori and Waldorf methods, Reggio Emilia has attracted a small but extremely loyal following in the United States. You will not find many schools styled Reggio Emilia as you will with Montessori or Waldorf schools, for instance. What you will find are schools which draw heavily on Reggio Emilia ideas and philosophy. They often refer to themselves as Reggio Emilia-inspired schools.

This short video gives us an overview of the Reggio Emilia approach.

The foundation of the Reggio Emilia approach can be found in the movement's principles.

• Children must have some control over the direction of their learning;
• Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, and observing;
• Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore;
• Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.

What then is Reggio Emilia? Here are five facts about it. There's much more to Reggio Emilia, of course, but this will give you an idea of what it is all about.

1. It is strictly an early childhood education approach.

Reggio Emilia values "the potential of all children to think, learn, and construct knowledge." Like Montessori Reggio Emilia is a progressive, child-centered approach to education. The idea is

As you explore your elementary school options, take time to find out about Waldorf education. Waldorf schools, or Steiner schools as they are often called, had their genesis in the writings and philosophy of Austrian philosopher and social reformer Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). To put Steiner into some sort of context, think of him as northern Europe's equivalent of Dr. Maria Montessori.

These two remarkable people shared something in common which would ultimately lead to the establishment of educational movements based on their philosophies and approaches: namely that children from the less-privileged stratae of society were capable of achieving the same levels of academic accomplishment as children from more privileged homes. The key to success was their approach to teaching children as well as their insistence that the traditional ways of educating children not be used. In addition both Montessori and Steiner insisted on complete control of their schools. No state or local government interference would be tolerated.

Maria Montessori established her school in the poorest neighborhood of Rome because she was convinced that every child, no matter what his social circumstances, was capable of learning. Dr. Montessori carefully observed the children in her school and recorded the results of her experiment.

Rudolf Steiner like Dr. Montessori earned a doctoral degree. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Rostock in 1891 and established his first school for the children of factory workers in 1919.

Today Waldorf schools offer an alternative to traditional K-12 schools.