Questions to ask when interviewing a shadow teacher, and what good answers sound like

Write a one-page summary of your child that you can hand to each candidate: age and class, the school and its board, what the school has asked for in its own words, the clinicians involved, what helps, what makes things worse, and the hardest part of the school day as the teacher describes it. The same page lets you compare candidates fairly, because each one is answering the same situation.

Know the school's terms before you meet anyone: the hours, where the shadow teacher will sit, who they report to, and whether the school wants to meet the shortlisted candidate. Both parents should attend if possible, and it helps to agree beforehand which questions each of you will ask. The broader process is in how to hire a shadow teacher in India.

Start with what the candidate has actually done, and ask for detail.

• Tell me about a child you supported for a full year. What were they like in the first month, and in the last?
• Which needs have you worked with most often, and which least?
• Have you worked inside a CBSE, ICSE, IB or IGCSE classroom? How was the support arranged there?
• What was the hardest placement you have had, and how did it end?
• Which of your referees saw you work most closely, and may I speak to them?

Listen for specifics: a named strategy, a change the child made, a mistake the candidate learned from. A candidate who can only describe children as sweet or difficult has not reflected on the work. Be cautious, too, with anyone who blames every past difficulty on a family or a school.

A shadow teacher who is good with your child at home can still be lost in a full classroom. These questions test the classroom half of the job.

• How would you sit beside my child without standing between them and the rest of the class?
• The teacher gives an instruction to the whole class and my child has not followed it. What do you do?
• How would you help my child join group work or a game at break?
• What do you do during assembly, sport, lunch and the end of the day?
• If the class teacher asks you to help other children as well, how do you respond?
• If a classmate teases my child, what do you do, and whom do you tell?

Good answers use the least help first, a gesture or a look before words, words before doing it for the child, and they work through the class teacher rather than around them. Listen for the idea of stepping back over time. A candidate who describes sitting beside the child all day, every day, for the whole year is describing dependence, not inclusion.

Describe your child's hardest moment exactly as it happens, then ask the candidate to talk you through it. Follow up with three questions: what are the early signs you would look for, what would you do first, and what would you do if that did not work? Then ask the question that reveals most: what would you never do?

A strong answer is calm and sequenced. It starts with prevention, noticing the signs and changing something before the moment arrives, moves to a plan for the moment itself, and ends with recording what happened and telling the family and the school. Any answer that includes shouting, threatening, withholding food, restraining the child or shutting them in a room ends the interview. Meltdowns at school describes what good support looks like before, during and after.

The shadow teacher sits between the classroom, the family and the clinic. Ask how they hold those relationships.

• Have you carried a speech-language pathologist's or occupational therapist's plan into a classroom before? How?
• How would you like to communicate with the class teacher and the inclusion coordinator?
• What goes into your daily note, and what never goes into it?
• Would you attend the IEP review, and what would you bring to it?
• How would you tell me about a bad day?

Candidates who have worked in supervised placements will describe a short daily note, a monthly report and a regular conversation with the school. What a good monthly report looks like and what an IEP is explain what those documents should contain.

Ask where the candidate's role ends. A good shadow teacher says without hesitation that they do not diagnose, do not advise on medication and do not run therapy programmes, and that they work to the plans the clinicians set. Ask what they would do if they were worried about something they saw at school or at home, and listen for a reporting route rather than a reassurance.

Ask about photographs and phones, about giving medicine, and about being alone with the child. Ask directly whether they have ever had a concern about a child's safety and what they did. A candidate who has never seen anything worrying in years of work is either very new or not being straight with you. Safeguarding a child in a private home lists the rules worth writing down.

The practical questions decide whether a good match lasts the year. Ask about the daily commute to the school, because in a large city it decides who will still be there in February. Ask about the hours they can commit to, leave, the school calendar and exam periods, and whether they can continue at home after school if the family wants that. Ask which languages they can work in with the child, with the school and with the rest of the household.

Finally, ask what they need from you. Good shadow teachers ask for the reports, a clear channel to the school, a named person to call and a household that follows the same plan. A candidate who asks for nothing has not thought about how the work is done.

Most families remember the overall impression of an interview better than the words. Noting the answers against this table helps.

Narrow to one or two candidates, introduce your child briefly, and then run a paid trial inside the classroom with an agreed end date and a review that includes the class teacher. Watch how the candidate settles with your child, how the teacher responds to them, what the daily note says, and how the child is at home in the evening. The interview tells you how someone thinks; the trial tells you how they work.

Special Minds sends families only candidates who have already passed two interviews, one on safeguarding and one on the specific needs of children like theirs, and families see how each candidate scored and why. The candidate standards page sets out every check.