The Hiring Tape

Kim Porcheddu, Director
Little Ones at Living Word Preschool, Grapevine, TX

My dilemma has never been whether or not I should rent a tape from the ELEA Library, only which one to rent first. As a newly hired director of a preschool ministry I knew I would be doing a lot of teacher training in the future. Although I was thrilled with the selection of tapes that were available to rent, I needed to find one that would benefit all of the teachers in our program. The tape that intrigued me most was “The Hiring Tape”?

When I rented this tape last fall I was not sure what to expect. The tape gives you several different classroom scenes. The idea is to show these scenes to prospective teachers and get feedback from them about what they observe in scenes on the tape. The tape comes with an instructional page that helps you assess the responses from an applicant. After watching the tape I was disappointed that I would not be interviewing prospective employees in the near future. However, the thought arose that I could use the ideas from this video to help me with the training of my existing staff.

The scenes provided on the tape are excellent tools to use in discussions with the staff at a preschool. How do staff members vary in what they find appropriate as far as behavior in the classroom? Is the staff flexible when the children have different ideas or needs in regards to the learning environment? What is the teaching skill level of each teacher? Who is ready to mentor those teachers who are less experienced? Using this tape as part of staff training has given me a lot of insight regarding my staff. I was able to see areas in which we excel as well as areas that need improvement. Now if I could just decide which tape I am going to rent next.

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