Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Know Your Educational Jargon!!

As you are interviewing for a teaching position, there may be educational jargon that is thrown your way. In order to know what you might be up against, here is a list that you should either know already or begin your own dictionary. You don't want to be caught off guard!!

ADHD, accommodations, alignment, application of skills and knowledge, assessment (formative and summative), balanced literacy, behavior management plan, benchmarks, best practices, Bloom's Taxonomy, classroom management, collaboration, Common Core Standards, comprehension, critical thinking, good core instruction, critical thinking, data, differentiated instruction, ELL, enrichment, essential outcomes, evaluation, feedback, fluency, IEP, interventions, literacy, mastery, methodology, problem solving, Professional Learning Communities, proficiency, Response to Intervention (RtI), rigor, rubric, School improvement, standards based, target, Tier I, Tier II, Tier III, teacher evaluation laws in IL (or state that you will work in).

The educational jargon listed above should be terms that you have had experience with in your college course work, clinical experiences, student teaching and subbing (if you have subbed and participate in school discussions and work with a team). Many of these terms are used by teachers, yet not all really understand the concepts behind the terms.

While these terms and concepts are going to be used every day in your teaching experiences, make sure that you have some core beliefs connected to these terms and not just regurgitating the definitions in an interview. For example, YOUR core beliefs about what is the best approach to classroom management in YOUR classroom, or YOUR core beliefs about collaboration with other professionals, or YOUR core beliefs about using a rubric. This may take some heavy duty thinking on your part, but it will pay off and show some personalization when you are asked some interview questions regarding the above jargon!!!