The Detailed Job Description
This is the last part of the package that we will send out to applicants. The whole package will include:
- a personal letter
- an application form
- a detailed job description
Devil in the detail
The detailed job description is more complete than the one that we will have on the Staff Wanted page of the Prado school website. This is all about funneling. If you don’t get that idea, go back and have a look: in essence we want to attract as many people as possible to take an interest and progressively eliminate the ones we don’t want.
This job description has more detail because to have got this far the candidate must have been interested enough to follow the process through: Seeing the job advert, reading the brief Staff Wanted page then deciding to thoroughly explore the website general info plus a selection of articles and podcasts chosen by us. We want to give them a clear idea of what we are about because we might be inviting them for an interview and paying their expenses. It is a waste of time and money if they come for an interview only to tell us that certain conditions are impossible for them or don’t make sense.
If they wind their way through all of the above, and then write and request an application package we have to think they are serious and only then do we send our Personal Letter, Detailed Job Description and Application Form with its multiple choice quiz, and request for a personal letter from the applicant.
We figure people randomly sending off 50 bulk CVs will most likely not get to our final stage. Especially since we refuse to read CV’s.
the holy trinity
There are three components to the detailed description. Both the Science Teacher job and the Clubhouse job will have:
- A statement of a Prado Teacher’s role in the democratic school community.
- A statement of the specific teaching job, and its particular requirements.
- A description of how each position will develop into becoming an Area Team Leader.
REview: What’s ThE Basic design Game We are playing ?
In Week One we said that we were Designing a School that would have around 140 students. There was some issue for a while whether we were going to ‘design’/’demonstrate’ an up and running school or if we were going to act like we were in a start-up situation. After a wobble about that we came up with the following narrative, which seemed to fit our hiring procedures:
‘This is strategic employment. Prado School was created by Jason Preater and Leonard Turton, two former teachers and education managers at Summerhill School. Starting with the Clubhouse Age ( 9+ to 12+) the school has grown successfully and it’s now time to hire two teachers with the idea of creating Team Leaders at the Clubhouse and Senior Level of the School, the senior level being the second growth stage that will develop over the next two years. We do not want to rush into that, so we want to hire a ‘Science’ teacher who will later become the team leader in the upper school before there is an upper school to run. The idea is that she will see what the Clubhouse is all about, get some valuable experience there and be able to apply that experience to the developing senior school.’
The third stage will, eventually, be the addition of a Lower Primary Level.
We don’t want the sucky prestige game that goes on in other schools whereby needy adults want to offer progressively ‘higher-looking’ level courses to massage their egos. We don’t want leaving the Clubhouse Age to mean ‘going up’ to a ‘high school look’ and attitude. In fact, we want all our teachers to have experience of the core age range- Clubhouse.This is the ambience, the habitat feel, the free choice of action in democratic community feel that we want to see mirrored at all levels of Prado School, with only necessary age and curriculum adjustments. At Summerhill they do something similar by obliging new teachers to spend a few terms in the House with kids that age, regardless of the age level of the kids they teach.
investigating what we have written
In the Wednesday Podcast we are going to be talking about the Job Description details and trying to put ourselves into the shoes of those precious candidates we want to come and work at our school. We only want the best, of course, so long as they are not needy, arrogant, up themselves or results-driven.
Looks like we have some stuff to talk about this Wednesday.
