Go Beyond the Resume: One School’s Approach to Hiring ‘Whole Teachers’
One of the advantages independent schools have over their public counterparts is their ability to hire teachers who come from more diverse backgrounds. Teachers in independent schools could be former dentists, lawyers, consultants, professional athletes, or accountants who came around to teaching later in their career paths and offer perspectives honed not in a classroom or in a licensure exam room, but in the real world.
In the Fall 2017 issue of Independent School magazine, Grauer School (CA) founder and Head of School Stuart R. Grauer wrote an article entitled “Getting Beyond the Résumé in Hiring” where he shares the experience of hiring two English teachers. In his stack of resumes were teachers with Ph.Ds, decades of experiences, and long-winded explanations of their past success in the classroom.
Grauer wasn’t interested.
No doubt, we had talented people inquiring. But these great résumés reveal little about the personalities of the people who created them or how they relate to teens.
The questions he was interested in having candidates answer were related to creativity, compassion, empathy, and interests that they could share with their students that add color to their lives. Grauer was looking for educators who were interested in educating the whole student. He was looking for a “whole person.”
Ultimately, the two people Grauer hired checked all the boxes: Both had master’s degrees (at least), both had decades of experience in education, and both had interests that take them out of the classroom and into the world. These are the “whole teachers” independent schools seek to help the world solve the problems that the next generation will have to solve.
It is easy for people of my generation — the millennial class who have just set out on their careers — to get beaten down by the call and response of the modern job search where everyone hiring seems to want someone with experience, but nobody is interested in providing an opportunity to gain that experience.
But to borrow from Grauer’s point about finding whole teachers, it is important to remember that everything we do in our lives impacts our ability to attract new career opportunities. Few companies are interested in hiring people who spend 100 percent of their energy on their job — they want people who have an affinity for music, a passion for cooking, or enjoy running or biking to blow off steam. Companies — just like independent schools — want whole people who are committed to bettering themselves in spirit, mind, and body (shoutout Springfield College!).
Stay in the lab. Always be learning. Get better every day. Someone is looking for a whole person like you, so continue adding color to your life and know that your passions will be the thing that adds color to the résumé on the table.
