Interview Questions with Mr.

Martinez

1. What was the primary reason you became a teacher?

The primary reason I became a teacher was because of how much I loved to help others.
For example, in high school during the tenth grade, we had to pass our proficiency exams as
that was a requirement to graduate. I passed them, and with math being a near perfect
score. Fast forward to senior year, a few of my friends still had not passed it and were at
risk of not meeting all requirements to graduate. I took two days of the week and we would
review so much from reading and math. Later in the year, they received a note that they had
passed. Seeing the joy on their faces sparked a fire to help others in need, and that is when I
decided to become a teacher.
2. What are the main challenges you face as a teacher?
The main challenges of being a teacher is meeting the needs of your students, given the
vast circumstances and obstacles that teachers face. Had this question been asked prior to
the pandemic, a few challenges (based on my experience in a highly populated ELL school)
is meeting the language needs of my students, lack of proper funding, minimal parental
engagement, and the demands from admin/district. Having taught through the pandemic,
on top of the previously stated challenges, we are now faced with drastic behaviors, lack of
engagement from students, wider achievement gap, and much more.
3. What is the best part about being a teacher?
Despite these challenges, the best part about being a teacher is having your own personality
to teach your students the wonders and joy of learning. For example, I love using humor to
motivate my students and engage them with their learning, and ultimately seeing the
outcome of them achieving standard mastery in their work. Just their own progression and
seeing a lot of "I finally get it!" moments makes this job absolutely amazing!
4. How do you determine where students sit in class?
I use a variable of assessments, behaviors, background information, IEPs, and so much to
determine where they sit in class. I do not group them solely based on something like MAP
data, but also behaviors, and medical. Since my class is homogeneous grouping, there is
still a learning difference among the students. From there, I look at how well they score on
their assessments, their behaviors, and what problems they may have based on the
cooperative learning strategy for seating.
5. How do you determine the members of any flexible group?
As you get to know your students, they are typically assigned a number from 1-4. This helps
arrange groups and members in a given task. (I hope I answered that question correctly).
6. Beyond standardized testing, what assessments do you use regularly?
I use many informative assessments that guide my next step so they are able to get one
step closer to achieving mastery (or near) on their summative assessments. A typical
informative assessment I may use are discussions, jotting down certain observations from
a given strategy or finding, who might be on the daily struggle, and even their own
understanding of what they are learning. This is a must in almost every teacher's classroom.
I usually have students put their heads down and give me one of three fingers. 1 - I
completely understand the concept and am able to teach it to someone else ; 2 - I am
Interview Questions with Mr. Martinez

confused in some areas, and need additional guidance ; 3 - I am reaching frustration levels
and need help now.
7. What requirements are placed on you for reporting progress to parents?
Requirements on progress report cards are always data driven. For example, we always
make weekly/monthly progress on monitored assessments (math facts, sight words).
Behavior is very serious here as this affects the instruction of that child and others.
8. How often do you interact with a student's parents in person and what type of
discussions do you typically have?
WIth a few parents, I discuss daily and with the rest of the class, I always contact them at
least once a week. Most of the time it is behaviors, what can be done, what is observed, and
potential outcomes of these behaviors if they are fixed or not. Additional support in
behaviors and academics is always provided.
9. How much grading do you complete on a daily/weekly basis?
We have to have at least one grade per subject per week. For reading, this is their weekly
quiz and sometimes we include a one minute reading fluency. For writing, this can be based
on their writing they have done in class (with a rubric), or sometimes we may use their
written response from the reading curriculum.
10. How long does it take to prepare a lesson for the day/week?
Typically, to prepare a lesson will take a few minutes. To actually plan this lesson out, will
take about 5-10 minutes. Since most lessons add on to each other, weekly planning takes
no more than one hour. With the help of your colleagues, planning time takes less.
11. What procedures or strategies do you use to maximize instructional time?
To maximize instruction time, I will literally tell my students, "You have to do exactly what I
say in my directions to not only save everyone time for their learning, but to help you
understand exactly what to do". This is like, if I ask them to turn to a certain page, I will have
students do other things and then I remind them, "Remember, I only told you to turn to X
page". If you are doing something besides that, you are not following directions. Explicit
directions to beginning a task or work will save so much time.
12. What positive reinforcement programs have you had success with, and what behavioral
consequences seem most effective with this age group?
Positive reinforcements with my group of students is using my superhero plush toys I have
around the room. Sometimes, instead of me talking, I will use superman or flash and
pretend they are talking and will literally hold them and mimic certain movements. This
always engages everyone because this is not typically what they see in a classroom or
teachers do. Using humor in light of a bad situation helps your challenging or struggling
students with motivation.
13. How are specialist teachers involved in the instructional planning process?
Specialist teachers will sometimes ask what we are doing in class or what they can aid to
our curriculum/behaviors. I will be honest, at my school, they do homogenous grouping. To
go beyond this, the two teachers on my team have the lowest group of students with
entering levels of kindergarten across all subjects. With academic struggles coming from
Interview Questions with Mr. Martinez

that, we have severe behaviors. A few weeks ago, we had massive shifts across teachers
and students because of administrators receiving their budget from the district. As we were
just getting the hang of procedures and getting to know our students, we shifted many
students around and we went from the best grade level to the worst (beyond worse).
Specialist teachers like our Social Emotional Learning (SEL) teacher helps so much with this
aspect.
14. How often are you evaluated, and what measurement tool is used by the administrator
for determining your teaching performance?
Since I am not on probation anymore, I am only observed formally (at a minimum) once a
year with 3-5 informal observations. These are just estimates based on what I have had in
previous years (informal observations). The measurement tool used is the Nevada Educator
Performance Framework (NEPF). The goal is to hit as many standards as possible and
when you are done being evaluated, your supervisor will outline what they saw. You want to
see if you can hit other standards they did not see in other observations.
15. What consequences are there if your evaluation is not favorable?
If your evaluation is not favorable, your supervisor will let you know what to work on the
next time they come in. This needs to happen because they want you to succeed and offer
multiple changes to fix this before your evaluation is finalized around April. If your
evaluations throughout the year are low performing and/or did not resolve what your
supervisor had told you, you will see 1s and 2s on your final performance review. If this
happens, you most likely will get a "not effective" or can be told from your supervisor to the
district that they recommend you not be rehired. If this happens, unless you or the teacher
union can prove that this was a mistake, you most likely will not be rehired in this district
unless another principal sees differently. (most likely never happens).
16. What types of support do you receive instructionally, financially. Or professionally from
the school, parent organization, or school district to enhance instruction?
With instructional support, we always have professional development and assistance from
our reading and math coach on ways we can always improve our instruction or the material
from our curriculum.
17. What surprised you most about teaching as a profession?
What surprised me the most about teaching is the lack of support across many parties in
truly wanting the best for students. In my situation, my mom was always on top of any SOT
meetings or monthly parent events at my school. My mom, who was raising my brother and
I under major financial struggles, still managed to stay on top of our school work and if we
were not on the right track, she did something about it. This is not just from the parents, but
the bashing and disgust from community members to teachers is horrendous. Adding more
on top of teachers' plate with all of this makes this profession worthless and an absolute
insult to the learning of students. While I do my very best that I can, I was shocked to see
this my first year of teaching, and found that this is the norm at least in this district.