Interesting Questions to Ask a Teacher
Questions for a real conversation with a teacher, whether you are a parent, a student, or thinking about the job yourself. They go at the craft rather than the job description: what students always find hard, where the day is actually difficult, what parents worry about needlessly, and what keeps people in the work.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What do you teach that you're still learning yourself?
Why ask it
A warmer opener than asking what they teach, and it tends to get a real answer: a text they never liked, a unit added to the syllabus last year, a period of history they had to learn over one weekend.
What's the most unexpected thing a student has taught you?
Why ask it
Teachers keep these stories and almost never get asked for them. The good ones are small and specific, usually about a misunderstanding that turned out to be a better idea than the lesson plan.
Which lesson do you look forward to every year?
Why ask it
Points at where the enthusiasm actually lives. It is almost never the exam unit, and the answer tells you which part of the curriculum the job would be worse without.
What's a topic students always find harder than you expect?
Why ask it
Moves the conversation into the craft rather than the content. Answers name a precise sticking point, often something adults assume is obvious, like negative numbers or two words that look alike.
What's the most creative way you've had to explain something?
Why ask it
Asks for a story instead of a philosophy of education. Expect props, bad drawings and analogies involving food, and expect them to remember exactly which class it finally worked on.
What do students get right that adults assume they don't?
Why ask it
Reverses the usual direction, which is why it gets a considered answer. Teachers see competence at ages where the rest of us assume none, particularly around fairness and how the adults in the room are behaving.
Which part of the day is actually the hardest?
Why ask it
Rarely the lesson itself. Answers tend to name transitions, corridors, the twenty minutes after lunch or the first five minutes of a Monday, and the reasons are practical rather than emotional.
How much of the job happens outside teaching hours?
Why ask it
Grading, planning, emails and meetings are the invisible half. Asking for hours makes the workload discussable without turning the conversation into a complaint neither of you can act on.
What do parents worry about that they don't need to?
Why ask it
Genuinely reassuring if you are a parent. Reading ages, handwriting and comparisons with an older sibling come up repeatedly, and all three absorb more anxiety than they deserve.
What do parents not worry about that they should?
Why ask it
The harder half of the pair, worth asking only if you want a straight answer. Sleep, attendance and unsupervised phone use turn up far more often than anything academic.
What's changed in your classroom in the last five years?
Why ask it
Five years is recent enough to stay concrete. Answers usually cover class sizes, staffing gaps, behavior policy or new technology, and they tend to date each change precisely.
How have phones changed things?
Why ask it
Ask it plainly and expect a mixed answer rather than a lament. The interesting part is the specific adaptation: where phones go during class, what happened to research assignments, what they stopped setting as homework.
What do you do with a student who has decided they're bad at your subject?
Why ask it
Names the real daily problem in teaching, which is a student who has quietly given up. Listen for whether the answer involves changing the work or changing what the student believes about themselves.
Which student surprised you years later?
Why ask it
One of the few questions that reaches what teachers get from the job over a career. The stories are usually about someone difficult at fifteen who turned up again at twenty-five, and they are a large part of why people stay.
What did your training tell you that you dropped straight away?
Why ask it
Training and practice diverge quickly and everyone has an example. Answers often concern classroom management theory or lesson planning formats that could not survive a real room of thirty.
If you could change one thing and had the authority, what would you go first?
Why ask it
Better than asking about education policy in general, because going first forces a priority. Expect something unglamorous: contact time, class size, how often students are assessed.
What's the hardest conversation you have to have with a parent?
Why ask it
Slower and more serious than it sounds. Answers usually involve telling a parent something they do not want to hear about behavior or ability, and how the teacher prepares for that is the interesting part.
What keeps you in the job?
Why ask it
Direct enough to get past both the complaint and the vocation script. Answers tend to be small and specific, about a colleague or a class or a particular week, rather than about changing lives.
Have you ever thought about leaving, and what stopped you?
Why ask it
Only worth asking once the conversation has earned it. Most teachers have considered it, and what held them is usually one colleague, one timetable or one year group rather than anything about the profession.
What's one thing you wish people outside education understood?
Why ask it
A closing question that reliably produces the thing they most want said. Often about the distance between how schooling gets discussed in public and what an ordinary Tuesday actually contains.
Having the conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
When and how to ask
- Not at drop-off or pickup. Those minutes belong to logistics and to thirty other parents.
- Not in the first week of term or the last two. Both are administratively punishing.
- If you want a proper conversation, ask for one and say roughly how long you need.
- One question at a time, and let the answer wander. Teachers manage conversations all day and notice immediately when they are being interviewed.
If you are the parent
Say whether this is curiosity or concern
A teacher who suspects a friendly question is the opening move of a complaint answers defensively, and you both lose the conversation. One sentence of framing prevents it.
Ask about the day, not the grade
What your child does in the fifteen minutes before class starts is often more informative than a mark, and teachers usually know the answer.
Do not ask them to compare children
They will not, they should not, and the request changes how carefully they speak to you from then on.
If you are thinking about teaching
- Ask about the first two years specifically. They do not resemble the rest of the career.
- Ask how many hours a normal week takes, then ask about the worst week of last year.
- Ask what they would want to know about a school before accepting a job there. The answer is a checklist you can use.
Common pitfalls
Leading with pay
Salary scales are public in most systems. Looking it up beforehand is more respectful than asking someone to say their own number out loud.
Treating them as a spokesperson for education
Most teachers have views on policy and no influence over it. Questions about their own classroom get better answers than questions about the system.
Fishing for stories about difficult students
They cannot tell you, and asking puts them in the position of refusing. Ask about a student who surprised them instead.
The joke about those who cannot do
It is not new to them and it quietly ends the conversation, along with any chance of the good answers further down this list.