Recruiting the right teachers for your school . . . Helen Kinsey-Wightman So I am back in the Acting Principal chair, this term is 8 weeks long and my to do list feels like it would take 10 weeks even if I only left school to sleep . . . Top of the list is ensuring I have the right teachers in 2020. Fortunately, I do have some experience in teacher recruitment. As Principal of an International School I travelled to the UK twice a year to recruit teachers with the help of a recruitment consultant. I once asked her what the secret to her success was and she said: thorough background checking and great instincts. When you are recruiting teachers and taking them away from their support networks, half way around the world to work in a country where they don’t speak the language and won’t be able to buy their favourite comfort food in the supermarket, choosing wisely is important. So what did I learn? 1. Knowing what you need . . . Before you start it is really important to know the attributes that you need in your employees. ‘Hire character, train skill’ is a quote attributed to Peter Schutz the CEO of Porsche. This notion fits well with Carol Dweck’s research around growth mindset. She would argue that choosing staff with a growth mindset leads to greater organisational success. What values and beliefs are at the core of your school? What initiatives have you invested in that you need new staff to buy into? What are your non-negotiables? Create a profile and design your recruitment process around finding the person who fits. 2. Your recruitment process – what skills can’t be assessed in an interview? If our core business is teaching – why do our recruitment processes so rarely involve watching a teacher teaching? Create a situation where you see a teacher at work, either by visiting their own classroom, or through creating a situation where they teach in your own school. It is a reasonable expectation that given a learning outcome ie that students will understand the difference between a physical and a chemical change, a good science teacher can create a lesson whereby learning occurs. You can then ask students for feedback too. When assessing communication skills, you could also ask teachers to send in a video clip of them introducing themselves – in New Zealand you might expect that this would reflect our bicultural heritage and include a pepeha. When selecting a senior leader, we needed a team member who would be able to fit into a high performing team, someone who was creative, collaborative and thoughtful in the way they solved problems. We set up a scenario (a real issue within our school environment) with some background reading and asked
the prospective team member to take the role of leader and work through the problem with our existing team. The scenario could be around creating a policy on cellphone use in a high school, or a programme to stimulate verbal language in the early years at primary school. This allowed our senior team to assess the skills of the candidates and gain a view on their values, collaboration and thinking skills. 3. The interview If you are a new Principal, before setting up your interview panel, check your BoT delegations. Do you need to have BoT members on the panel? In some schools this is at HoD/Syndicate leader level, in others it might be for senior leadership positions only. Who do you need on the panel? Steve Jobs was famous for advocating for a collaborative hiring strategy. It was common at Apple that interviewees would speak to at least a dozen people across disciplines. If a staffmember is giving a prospective teacher a tour of the school brief them about a few questions they can drop in and get their feedback afterwards. My favourite interview questions for teachers are: Tell me about your best lesson . . . Now tell me about your worst and what you did as a result . . . Knowing how people reflect on, and recover from the worst moments tells you a lot about their resilience. As an interviewer, it is sometimes really challenging when a candidate who seemed amazing on paper is really nervous or very shy. How do you draw them out? It might be tempting, but never answer the questions for them. Instead, rephrase the question and have some supplementary questions to get a deeper response. For candidates with gaps or frequent job changes in their CV ask them about this. ‘I notice you had 3 different jobs in 18 months – tell me about that . . . ’ It might be that there was a relationship breakdown over this period or a move to a new town. 4. References However desperate you are never employ a teacher without a reference check. Always ask, ‘Would you re-employ this person?’ Always check the applicant’s registration number on the Teaching Council website. 5. Creative solutions to staffing challenges Primary school teachers have strong pedagogy and can be valuable additions to a high school staff – particularly for junior classes needing acceleration. In a primary school a skilled ECE teacher could work with a Y1 class who need additional support
to be school ready. Having relationships with your local tertiary institution allows you to negotiate employment of almost qualified teacher trainees on an LAT prior to gaining provisional certification. Bringing teachers from overseas can be challenging although finding a skilled teacher who is invested in making the transition can be very beneficial. As a country school principal needing maternity leave cover, I recruited a teacher from Canada. He and his wife came to NZ for 6 months and I believe this time had a profound effect on them and was beneficial to learners in the school.
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6. Trust your gut instinct . . . Returning to the wisdom of a recruitment consultant, if something doesn’t feel right it probably isn’t. Offer feedback to unsuccessful candidates – this gives the opportunity for reflection and personal growth. We recently employed a teacher who had not been successful previously and had gone away and done some work on their cultural responsiveness because we identified this as a non-negotiable for employment at our school. 7. Finally – when you appoint staff: Think about what you learned about them in the recruitment process. How will you develop that person to fit the team? How will you provide induction and mentoring to upskill new staff regarding the initiatives in your school? All the best for your 2020 recruitment process.
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Digital Technologies and Hangarau Matihiko curriculum content.
Why teach it?
Fast-paced digital technologies change is having a significant impact on our society, our daily life, and on the future of work. This National Curriculum change is for all learners, and the future of Aotearoa.
Evolving learning: the revised Technology Learning Area and Hangarau Wāhanga Ako aims to support young people to build digital capabilities so they can participate, create, and thrive. It is timely to consider how your school is incorporating the new content into your local curriculum, and the Leading Local Curriculum Guide series will help you do this.
Technology.tki.org.nz
HangarauMatihiko.tki.org.nz
digi.tech@education.govt.nz
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nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Reviewing-your-curriculum