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INTERVIEW GUIDE FOR TEACHERS AND COUNSELORS

TARGETED RESPONDENT: These interview questions are intended for teachers and counselors at schools served by 

grantees. At this time we do not have suggestions on how many teachers and counselors should be targeted.

CONTENT: This document contains draft interview questions to be asked of teachers and counselors at schools 

served by grantees. We suggest questions that could be poised at the beginning or end of the school year, or both. 

These suggestions could be extracted to yield two types of interviews for teachers and counselors: 

(1) an interview for teachers served by grantees [G] that would be administered at the beginning of the 

school year [PRE];

(2) an interview for teachers served by grantees [G] that would be administered at the end of the school year 

[POST].

We use [PP] to suggest that an interview question should be administered both at the beginning of the school year 

[PRE] and at the end of the school year [POST].

1. [PP] What do School Turnaround AmeriCorps members do at your school? Did the activities change 

throughout the year? If so, then why?

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2. [POST] What level of interaction did you have with School Turnaround AmeriCorps members? In what 

capacity, if any, did you work directly with AmeriCorps members?

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3. [PRE] Can you please describe the process for assigning tasks to School Turnaround AmeriCorps 

members?

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4. [POST] How did you communicate with School Turnaround AmeriCorps members about the progress of 

your students with whom they were working?

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5. [PP] How prepared were the School Turnaround AmeriCorps members with whom you worked directly 

to serve at your school? What recommendations do you have about improving the training for 

AmeriCorps members before or once they begin to work in schools?

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6. [POST] Have School Turnaround AmeriCorps members had a positive academic influence on the 

students they work with?

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7. [POST] Have School Turnaround AmeriCorps members had a positive influence on the students they 

work with in terms of improved attendance, behavior, engagement, or socio-emotional health?

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8. [POST] Who supervised the School Turnaround AmeriCorps members? How adequate is the supervision 

of AmeriCorps members? By school faculty/staff? By a designated AmeriCorps team leader/supervisor?

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9. [POST] In which of the following ways did School Turnaround AmeriCorps members contribute to your 

school’s capacity to implement its turnaround plan? Specifically, how did AmeriCorps members help the 

school build capacity through...

a) fostering respect among students and staff?

b) involving families (e.g. in attending events, providing access to information and resources to support their 

child’s education, helping students complete homework, volunteering in child’s classroom)?

c) meeting the academic needs of specific groups of students?

d) meeting the behavioral and/or socio-emotional health needs of specific groups of students? 

e) filling additional instructional/support staff positions?
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f) supporting teachers in the use of data/assessments and with classroom activities?

g) providing before-, after-school, or extended learning time programming?

h) improving the school environment and climate?

i) other activities and contributions? (please specify)

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10. [POST] How satisfied are you with the effectiveness of interventions provided by School Turnaround 

AmeriCorps members?

Probe (IF YES): What worked well?

Probe (IF NO): What needs to be improved?

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11. [POST] What challenges have you experienced in implementing School Turnaround AmeriCorps 

members’ interventions in your classroom or in student counseling/tutoring programs? How were they 

resolved?

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12. [POST] What kind of feedback have you received about the School Turnaround AmeriCorps program 

from different stakeholders? In each case, what factors do you think contribute to this perception?

a. From teachers?

b. From school counselors and administrators?

c. From parents?

d. From community members?

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