Introduction
To complete this Internship Activity, I met with AB, the Director of Human Resources at my school and NH, the Middle and Upper School Principal. We discussed the various procedures they employ to recruit, interview and hire highly qualified teachers, as well as the unique position our school finds itself in as a private school vis-a-vis the NCLB legislation on this issue.
A Private School’s Relationship to No Child Left Behind
As a private institution, our school is not required to follow NCLB guidelines. So, while the legislation regarding the hire of “highly qualified teachers” is recognized as a sound set of operational principles, we are free to follow our own practices in this area.
Our school certainly operates within the NCLB guidelines when it comes to considering teachers. All of the instructors on our campus, K-12 are either certified by the state when hired or are required to achieve certification within their first year on campus. Furthermore, they all hold at least a bachelors degree in their area of instruction and many hold graduate or doctoral degrees as well.
The issue of State exams is interesting, particularly among our religious studies faculty; we are a dual-curriculum school and, while many of our religious teachers hold advanced degrees, there is no standardized test in their areas of instruction to require them to take.
Our Process
My interviews with AB, our HR Director, yielded more policy discussions, while the time I spent with NH felt more real-world. According to AB, our hiring procedures are:
- Identify a specific need for a teacher in a certain grade and/or subject area.
- If the need can not be met internally, allocate budget toward the hire of a new member of the faculty.
- Write and run an ad in a set of professional listings, some more general, some specific to private, religious schools in our area.
- Receive and examine resumes, weeding out the obviously unqualified. Check references on the remainder.
- Schedule in-person interviews with the most likely candidates. Interviews involve a number of administrators from across the school.
- Select the best candidate, extend an offer and hire.
When these steps are listed like this, the process seems orderly and certain to succeed… of course things never really turn out quite that smoothly. As NH, pointed out, there are a number of complicating factors:
- What if the need is immediate, making it impossible to run an ad for any length of time?
- What if a suitable candidate does not apply?
- What if budget can not be found?
In other words, NH’s real-world experience with the hiring of teachers during the school year (as opposed to over the summer) has given him a more cynical perspective on the goal of hiring only highly qualified teachers. “Every school employs unacceptable teachers,” he explained to me. “At a certain point, you’re left with only two choices: no teacher, or a lousy teacher. What’s the alternativ
I discovered this myself, first-hand.
My Experience
This year marked a transition for me from faculty to administration: I had been the high school’s Computer Teacher and, when I left, another teacher was hired to replace me. He was excellent, highly qualified, and a great fit for out school. Unfortunately, sometime in October it became clear that another teacher, one of our upper school Math Teachers, was not a good fit and she was asked to leave. DT, the Computer Teacher, was asked to take over her classes and the search began for a new Computer Teache
I participated in this search. I was asked to review resumes, identify likely candidates and, when the time came, I got to meet with the leading candidate as part of the interview process. I remember feeling that she knew the material and seemed qualified; NH extended an offer and we hired her.
Within a week it was apparent that we had made a mistake. The teacher we had hired couldn’t handle AP Computer Science, the most challenging course (which I had to teach in her stead) and wasn’t doing very well in her other courses either. She couldn’t manage her classroom effectively, missed meetings and seemed to have a lot of trouble following direction; she had to be told things several times before being able to complete tasks. Inside of a month she was let go and we are now searching for another teache
What went wrong? In hindsight, it seems obvious: we hired a teacher without ever seeing her teach. When I was looking for my current job, another school invited me to visit their campus to deliver a model lesson. I remember thinking how silly it seemed to travel all the way to New England just to teach for an hour but now, I wish we required the same thing as part of our procedure. The fact of the matter is that teachers are asked to do many things, but none is as important as the teaching… and our procedure, as it stands now, doesn’t examine that factor.
Obviously, this is where we have work to do. The NCLB requirements don’t really speak to this issue but I’ve come to realize that, when hiring a teacher, the most important question to ask is, “Can he teach?” I have understood for a long time that teaching ability spans subject matter; a talented teacher can teach almost any subject, provided he is given time to prepare the material.