Teacher Interviews

We interviewed 5 teachers over the last week for positions at Mountain View. During these interviews we discussed the budget, teacher job description, and administrator job description. Here are the highlights of the feedback we received:

• Cut the time on the 4 hours shadow. I changed this to “Perform multiple unscheduled blind shadows of each teacher throughout the month for a total of 2 hours.” This equates to having 1.7% of your total class time shadowed.
• Add time (16 hours) for conferences and add time for field trips. I created a section titled “Attend the following events”. I don’t feel that these require an increase in compensation.
• Teach to the top 3rd of the class. This is something that Laurie mentioned and if it is what we are planning on doing I want it in the job description. I’ve asked Laurie for additional details on this before I add it.
• We discussed that the administrator and secretary are there to provide services to the teacher and that the teacher should have the ability to choose which of these services they utilize. I feel that if a teacher wants total control over their classroom and does not want to utilize the secretary then they should have that option as long as they hold up their end of the bargain and operate efficiently. I’ve added the following item to the secretary job description “Meet with each teacher individually before the school year starts to review a list of services that you can provide. Document the items that the teacher is interested in and perform these duties”.
• I’m not sure if it came up in the discussion with the teachers, but during our talks after and between the meetings the topic of confidentiality kept coming up. I’ve added the following section to each of the descriptions “All information pertaining to student academic progress, disciplinary issues, and other information pertaining to individual students is confidential and should only be shared with parents, teachers, the administrator, and board members. An attempt should be made to keep these conversations discreet and to not have them take place in environments where others may over hear what is being discussed”.
• Our plan for ability grouping was also discussed. To clarify the process and to enable reassessment throughout the year I’ve added the following item to the administrators responsibilities “Work with the teachers to create a plan for ability group testing new students.”