Here's the exact framework that I use to land my educational leadership position. And now as an assistant principal, here is what I love to hear my actual candidates that are applying to me as we're sitting through the interview. This is what I love to hear them say. So there's a five step framework and it's the STAR method. And yes, I said five letters, right, because it's S-T-A-R-R.
So make sure you stick around so I can show you what that second R means, because the second R is huge and it's changing the game. And then also I'm going to give you my exact response that I use in my interview to an exact question that they answered. At the end, I'm going to put it all together into one succinct answer for you. So you can use it, steal it, whatever.
But it's exactly what helped me to land the position that I have now. So the STAR method, the first letter is the S. And S stands for situation.
And when we're talking about responding, the situation means tell exactly the situation that you noticed, the situation that you realized. What is it that happened that you were keen to that you said, OK, something needs to be done about this? The T then stands for task. So once you noticed that there was a situation, then the T task, what is the task that has to be done? Like clearly define what went off in your head, like, oh man, this is what has to happen.
This is what needs to take place. Then comes the A, which stands for action, which means what action did you then put in place to then to satisfy the situation with the task? So you notice the situation, you identify what tasks needed to be done. Then what was your action? like what did you specifically do that then led to the r results so s-t-a-r the first r stands for results what were the results based off of the action that you implemented you noticed the situation identified the task you went into action and then boom here are the results and the second r like i said is super powerful this is the one that changed the game is reflect like right there in the interview reflect on What that whole process looked like and how it went, right?
So that's the S-T-A-R-R method. And I'm going to give you an example of a question that was asked to me in my educational leadership interview. And this is the exact response, as much as I can remember, the exact response. that I gave that I think really really won them over so the question was something like when have you seen a need and taken the initiative to act on it and here was my response using the star method I said oh I got one I noticed like we don't have ISS in my school right so a lot of students would be sent down to the office when they had detention and when they got in trouble when they had to leave class and when they were sent down to the office they weren't always sent with work Which I get because sometimes as a teacher you don't have time to stop everything that you're doing, right?
And make sure that they're sent down with work. Sometimes they just have to go. So then when they got down to the office... Sometimes they would have nothing for them to do.
So either the secretary is down there and she's like, you know, what grade are you in? And trying to hop on teacher by teacher and trying to get work for them to do in the moment and print something out. But if that happens or doesn't happen, the student is just sitting there in the front office and they're hearing everything that's going on in the front office.
Everybody that's talking, they're like scratching at the desk because they got nothing to do. They're saying I'm bored. They're asking if they can go to the bathroom.
They're just a huge distraction and disruption because nobody's really... Watching them. So then I figured that there had to be something that kept them engaged because this is a huge waste of a learning opportunity.
They may have gotten sent out of class because they didn't have on the right uniform or they were, you know, late or something like that. But now they're missing so much instruction and they're, again, being a nuisance in the office. So they're causing distraction as well as missing out on so much learning opportunity. So I decided that I was going to just have a preset work for them to do already in the office. So I asked the teachers across the middle school to send in some work, work that students could do independently.
work that was review work or something like that, hard copies that we would then keep in the folder. I had a sixth grade folder, a seventh grade folder, and eighth grade folder. And then when a student would then send me down to the office, then the secretary, she would ask are you in sixth or seventh grade or eighth grade? And then she would pull the folder for the appropriate grade level and they would have work to do right then. And they would just sit there and they would get it done.
And what I noticed was it definitely helped with the teachers because they get to do it. They could just send students when they needed to send them to the office. They didn't have to think about, I don't want to send them because I have to send them to work. It wasn't like extra stress or pressure on them.
But then for the people in the front office staff, it wasn't extra stress or pressure on them to find work for them to do. And the students were remaining engaged and they weren't a nuisance. They weren't annoying.
Of course, sometimes they didn't want to do the work. But all then the people in front office would have to say is. You have your work in front of you, right? So they kept them engaged and it didn't really squander that learning opportunity but I didn't notice that I did this kind of at the beginning of the year and by like The for after the first couple of months we noticed that students that were repeat offenders They'll come down and they'll say I did that already I did that already like when we give them the package it. They'll say, I did that already.
And that made me think a couple of things. One, maybe if I were to do this again, maybe I would update it more regularly, like ask teachers to send in work every quarter or something like that. But even deeper than that, it made me think about the have so many repeat offenders.
So many people that would come down and say, I did that packet already. I did that packet already, which made me think that we need to focus on putting structures and systems in place that really get to the root of why these particular students are repeat offenders and what we can do to address those behaviors so that they can remain in class and not waste so many learning opportunities. So that's really what I want to start working on now. That's kind of my next venture. How do we get those students who are repeat offenders and keep them from consistently being sent out of class?
Boom. I know that was like, that was it. That's the response that I gave to that question that was asked. And as you can see, it used the full star method.
And again, as an assistant principal now, whenever somebody answers a question like this, it's like amazing and mind blowing to me. It answers all the questions. It's not theoretical. You know, it's not. This is what I would do if.
no, this is what I have done. This is the efficacy that I have seen. The reason why you want me in this leadership position is because I do things like this. So that was just one example, but any question that is asked, I guarantee you, try it, practice it, Google some potential interview questions. Any question that is asked, you can flip it and respond with a STAR method on something that you've actually done, seen results.
and able to reflect on. And I can't guarantee you that you will get the job, but I promise you that it'll be a great interview and I promise you it's going to make them hard to not hire you. All right. All right.
So once you do become that administrator, a school leader or whatever it is, you're going to want to be an effective one. So check out this video that I just recorded that's talking about how to be an effective school leader. And in the next video, we're going to be talking about how you can implement a system, a rollout, a system that your admin is not necessarily on board with, how you can get them to be on board. That's coming in the next video.
So like, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next one.