Sample Teacher Interview Questions
General Openers:
1. Tell us about yourself.
2. Explain your experience as it relates to this position.
3. Why do you want to be a teacher at this school?
4. Why did you decide to become a teacher?
5. What are you currently reading for enjoyment?
6. What interests do you pursue outside of the classroom?
7. To what teams and/or clubs did you belong as a student?
8. Why do you want to teach at the ____ level?
9. What do you like most about teaching as a career?
10. What is your least favorite aspect of teaching?
11. What do you think is the greatest challenge facing students today?
12. What is the most difficult aspect of teaching today?
13. What is your educational background?
14. What do you want to be doing in five years?
15. What is your philosophy of education?
16. What are three things you believe about teaching?
17. What are your plans for continuing your professional growth?
18. List five adjectives that describe yourself and explain your choices.
19. What is one of your weaknesses, and how are you working to improve it?
20. Describe your teaching style.
21. What are the qualities of an excellent teacher?
Teaching experiences:
1. Please review for us your teaching experiences such as levels subjects taught, years, location, etc.
2. Please tell us about your most challenging experience while working with children or in the classroom.
3. What was your most rewarding experience during student teaching?
4. How well has your college/university prepared you for the field of teaching?
5. What experience have you had with students from culturally diverse backgrounds?
6. What activities might you coach or advise as a member of the teaching staff?
7. What personal strengths do you find especially helpful in your teaching?
8. Describe the "worst" lesson you have taught. What did you learn from it?
9. What role do standards play in your classroom?
10. What is your favorite subject to teach? Why?
11. What is your least favorite subject, and how do you overcome your indifference toward it to teach it well?
12. Tell us about a troubling student you have taught and how you helped him or her.
13. Describe your best professional development experience.
14. What role have parents played in your classroom?
15. What experience have you had with team-teaching? What is your opinion of it?
16. What is the greatest success you have had in teaching?
Instructional Skills:
1. Describe the best lesson you have delivered. Why was it successful?
2. Describe your typical lesson.
3. Describe your ideal lesson.
4. How will you instruct students with varying abilities?
5. If students were having difficulty teaming a skill or concept, what would you do?
6. What techniques would you use to be sure that students understand?
7. How do you feel when a student fails?
8. What techniques do you use to keep students actively involved during a lesson?
9. How have and will you address your students' different learning styles?
10. How do the assignments you give offer students the opportunity to express their creativity and individuality?
11. It seems like there is never enough time to cover the curriculum or to get children to master content and skills. Would you comment on that?
12. Are you constantly searching for things you can show, tell, or demonstrate to students? Tell us about some recent discovery, something that you have found.
13. How do you deal with the unmotivated student?
14. Tell me about some specific motivational strategies you use to get students excited about teaming.
15. Given the multitude of material that must be taught, what is the optimum way to cover all subjects and still meet individual needs? How does your management of your classroom facilitate this?
16. What would you do if 50% of a class did poorly on a test?
17. Have you developed any new ideas about teaching in the past few months? Describe one or two of them for us.
18. How do you evaluate your own teaching performance?
19. How would you rank these in importance: planning, discipline, methods, evaluation? Why?
20. How do you present or introduce a new word to a class?
21. How do you define quality student work?
22. What instructional strategies will you use to enhance student engagement?
Technology Skills:
1. How would you apply technology to enhance daily instruction and increase student learning?
2. How have you integrated technology into your teaching instruction?
3. What plans do you have for the integration of technology in your own classroom?
4. What activities has the use of technology replaced, if any?
5. Are you comfortable with the use of technology in the classroom?
6. On a scale of 1-5, rate your integration/knowledge of instructional technology in the classroom, 1 being low and 5 being high. Please explain.
7. What are your computer skills? What computer software have you used?
8. What technology-based activities do you have your students do?
Planning Skills:
1. How well organized are you? Why is organization important for a teacher?
2. What do you include in your daily lesson plans?
3. How do you modify your teaching to reach students who are struggling to perform at grade level?
4. How do you provide support for students with exceptional ability?
5. Describe your planning process for a major project or unit.
6. Do you prefer to do long term or short term plans? How do you plan for instruction?
7. How would you take advantage of resources within the community to enhance your teaching?
8. Describe your classroom’s physical appearance.
9. What could a visitor to your class expect to see?
10. If most of the students in your class failed an assignment, test, or project, how would you respond?
11. How closely do you follow your plans?
12. How do you feel when you don't meet a deadline? What do you do when students do not meet their deadlines?
13. What are some of the considerations you make when planning your lessons?
14. How do you go about planning a unit?
15. How much homework will you assign? How do you know how long it will take your students?
16. How do you motivate your students to become active learners in your classroom?
17. How do you organize your classroom?
18. How do you structure your time to manage all of the duties associated with teaching?
19. What do you do when a student fails to meet an important deadline?
20. How do you encourage students to learn?
Classroom Discipline & Management:
1. Describe your philosophy regarding discipline.
2. What was the most challenging discipline problem you've encountered and how did you handle it?
3. What techniques would you use to handle discipline problems that may arise in your classroom?
4. What steps would you follow to deal with a student who displays consistent behavioral problems in your classroom?
5. Under what circumstances would you refer a child to the administrator's office?
6. A student is consistently late to your class. How do you handle the situation?
7. What kinds of rules do you have in your classroom? How are they established?
8. What do you feel are the most important factors in classroom control?
9. What techniques do you use to increase the probability that students will behave appropriately?
10. How would you handle a student who is a consistent disruption or behavioral problem?
11. What was your biggest obstacle in your past teaching experiences? How did you resolve it?
12. How would you handle a student who refuses to do work in your class or does not stay on task?
13. Share three interesting discipline or management techniques used in the classroom.
14. Describe a situation in your last job when you felt pressure. How did you handle it?
15. What is your attitude towards individual vs. total class punishment?
16. Compare negative and positive reinforcement and describe effects of each.
17. What is your approach to classroom management?
18. How would you deal with a student who regularly missed school or your class?
19. How do you establish authority and discipline?
20. How do you handle a child who seems gifted, but is a discipline problem?
21. How do you handle a child who is a low achiever and a discipline problem?
22. Some people say you should demand respect. Do you agree?
Knowledge of Subject:
1. What coursework have you taken that has made you especially suited for this position?
2. What kinds of materials and supplies would you need to do your best job?
3. Are there any materials you have used that you find are especially effective for slow learners or bright students?
4. What kinds of tests do you like to give?
5. What other types of assessments do you feel are important? Why?
6. Describe your educational background and teaching experience related to your subject area.
7. How do you stay current in your field?
8. Describe your experience with curriculum development, alignment, and mapping.
9. In which curriculum area do you feel particularly strong?
10. What goals do you hope to achieve in your subject?
11. Explain your knowledge of the NYS learning standards and how you prepare your lessons to meet those standards. Please site specific examples.
Relationships with colleagues, parents, and students:
1. Are you willing to sponsor any extra-curricular activities?
2. What kind of person do you like to work for?
3. What kind of people do you find it difficult to work with and why?
4. How do you feel about parent contact?
5. How would your students describe you as a teacher?
6. Tell of some ways you would involve parents in your classroom.
7. What would you tell your incoming class in a "back-to-school" letter at the start of a new school year?
8. How do you let parents know the progress of their child?
9. In your opinion, how effective are parent conferences in solving student problems?
10. What do you hope to learn from your colleagues?
11. What would your students say they had learned after spending a year in your class?
12. What do you want students to remember about your class?
13. How would you establish and maintain good communication with the parents of your students?
14. What would you tell a parent who complained about his/her child not having enough homework?
15. How much do you want to know about your students in order to be most helpful to them?
16. What three things do you most want to know about your students?
17. What would you do if your Principal made a decision you didn’t like?
18. You have heard students complaining constantly about another teacher. What would you do?
19. Give an example of how you handle conflicts with colleagues or co-workers.
20. If a student said she though you were the worst teacher she ever had, what would you say?
21. How do you build rapport with students?
22. How do you give your students recognition? Do you think a student can have too much recognition?
23. How would you handle making a difficult phone call to a parent?
24. Give an example of how you handle conflicts with parents.
General Closers:
1. Given your sense of this school up to this point, what do you think you will need to succeed as a teacher in our school?
2. What are your personal and professional goals in the next 5 and 10 years?
3. If I were your principal and we were setting goals for next year, what would they be?
4. Is there any reason you can think of which would prohibit you from fulfilling your obligations as a teacher of our school?
5. Why do you feel that you are the best candidate for the position?
6. Give us a one-word character trait that would serve you best in this job and explain why you believe it to be important.
7. What three words would your colleagues use to describe you?
8. What three words would your students use to describe you?
9. What kinds of things are important to you and would definitely be part of your daily schedule?
10. Why should we hire you? What unique leadership skills do you bring to this district?
11. Give three reasons why you should be selected as a teacher of our school/district.