.

It’s a routine question I always try to ask candidates for teaching positions here at MPA.  “What kind of an impression did our students make on you?” is usually how I phrase it.  My purpose in asking is always to get a sense of how good the candidate’s powers of observation are, how attentive they were to who our students are, as opposed to just “delivering” content in the demonstration lesson.

I use their answers principally as another tool in judging whether this or that candidate seems like a better fit to fill an opening we may have.  But, of course, there is a side benefit.

“Really good thinkers….ready to volunteer to help with the assigned task...very welcoming to me as a visiting teacher…” were some of the things I heard this week as I interviewed candidates for a part-time position teaching art next year.

Beyond what they say, what is quite common in their reactions is something more spontaneous and non-verbal.  If you’ve read (or read about) Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink,” you know his theory that we actually make firm and lasting judgments about people in the first few seconds of a first encounter.

When I ask about the candidate's reactions to MPA students, there is an involuntary spark in their eyes, as they think back to the class earlier in the day and these wonderful students that are both welcoming and inquisitive, ready to learn, ready to meet someone new, ready to help, and just plain having a good time in the classroom or studio or lab.  In that brief second, the candidate’s true sense of the students is revealed.  For me, it’s a chance to see the image of our students reflected in the excitement and enthusiasm of a visitor.

But wait, you say, of course they just want a job and are trying to say whatever we want to hear so we’ll hire them.  That might be true if the reaction wasn’t so immediate and too spontaneous to have been planned.

All of this may seem like a lot of attention to be paid to only two seconds out of an interview.  But it is vitally important.  Because, after the grasp of the subject matter and after the facility with lesson planning and curriculum design and after the ease of classroom management and understanding of the stages of development for learners, it is the love of young people that really sustains a career in this very challenging field of teaching.  And you can’t fake that.

If ever you will love working with students, you will love working with ours because of who they are and because of the environment they inhabit here.  And I see it every time I talk to someone who has encountered our kids for the first time.

*          *          *

I wore visitor’s eyes myself last week, serving as the chair of an ISACS visiting evaluation team for a school in Cleveland.  Last Wednesday night just before midnight, dead tired after four days and nights leading the team, I sat at the computer in my hotel room and wrote the weekly Head’s Message, to be sent back here.  I had finished making notes for a 65 page report of the visiting team and was determined not to miss a week on the MPA blog schedule.

Eight great paragraphs later, I clicked the send button on the email…and it disappeared.  Timed off line.  Email gone.  Nowhere to be found.  It was a brilliant piece, probably the best I’ve written all year, but once it was gone at that late hour, I couldn’t remember a word of it.  Like the big fish that got away.

It had something to do with reflecting back on our own highly successful ISACS evaluation visit in the fall of 2004, all that it meant to us as a school, and why it is important for the professional members of the ISACS community to serve on visiting teams.  I included a link to the ISACS website (www.isacs.org) for those who might have been interested in learning about our accreditation process, considered to be the best in the country for independent schools.   

The experience of serving on these teams is said by many to have been the best professional development experience of their careers.  And it is a tremendous amount of work performed by volunteers in service to the visited school.  More importantly, it is a service to the collective accrediting body and, through that, to all of the member schools.

But mostly, I wrote about being a visitor in someone else’s school community and of seeing their school, on their behalf, with fresh eyes.  Or at least, I think that’s what was in that message that was lost somewhere between here and Cleveland, the best one of the year, so far….