Teacher Q&A: Is It Inappropriate to Call Regarding a Job Interview If the Principal Reached Out Via Email?
Saturday afternoon on my front porch, iced coffee sweating through the paper cups, Lila was twisting the corner of her teaching resume until the paper started to fray. The 22-year-old just graduated from our local university’s education program, and yesterday she got her first interview invite from the principal at the elementary school three blocks from our neighborhood. The catch? It came over email, and she’s been panicking for 24 hours about whether she should call to confirm she got it, introduce herself, and lock in a time. “My career coach said calling makes you look motivated,” she said, picking at a loose thread on her jeans. “My cousin who teaches over at the middle school said calling is rude, that principals hate getting unexpected calls after they email. So which is it?”
I told her I’ve been in her exact shoes. Twelve years ago, when I was hunting for my first full-time teaching job, I got an email from a principal on a Friday night, and I stayed up until 1 a.m. pacing my tiny studio apartment, debating if I should call first thing Monday. I ended up calling, because I’d heard so many stories about emails getting lost in spam folders, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t drop the ball. The principal answered while she was supervising after-school car line, and she was polite, but I could hear the background noise of parents honking and kids yelling, and she rushed me off the phone. When I interviewed a week later, she made a passing comment that still stuck with me: “We check email every hour during hiring season. If we reach out that way, that’s where we want you to reply.”
A few years back, I sat in on hiring meetings for a 2nd grade opening at my school, so I got to see this dynamic from the other side. We had 14 qualified applicants, and we emailed all of them to invite them for interviews. One called me 10 minutes after I sent the email, just to say “thank you, I’m really excited about this job.” I was in the middle of covering a class for a teacher who went home sick with a stomach bug, and I had to step out into the hall to take the call, which meant leaving 25 4th graders with a student teacher who was still learning the ropes. That call didn’t make her stand out in a good way. We all remembered it, but not because we thought she was driven – we remembered it because it was an unnecessary interruption that threw off our whole afternoon.
It’s not that calling is always inappropriate. It just depends on the context. Most of the time, if a principal took the time to sort through hundreds of applications, read your resume and cover letter, and write you a personal email to invite you for an interview, that means email is their preferred method of communication. Principals don’t just sit in their offices waiting for calls. They’re covering lunch duty, mediating conflicts between parents, leading IEP meetings, and answering 100+ emails a day. An unexpected non-urgent call pulls them away from work that’s already piling up faster than they can handle.
The first thing you should do, if you get an email interview invite from a principal, is read the whole thing again, slowly. Nine times out of ten, it tells you exactly what they want you to do. If it says “reply to this email with your availability,” that’s what you do. Keep it short and clear – no long paragraphs about why you love teaching, that’s what the interview is for. Something like “Thank you so much for the opportunity to interview for the open 1st grade position. I am available Monday through Thursday between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. next week. Please let me know what time works best for your schedule. I look forward to meeting you. Best, [Your Name]” is perfect.
I can think of only three specific scenarios where calling is not inappropriate at all. First, if you reply to the email with your availability, and three full business days go by and you haven’t heard anything back, even after checking your spam folder. Send a quick follow-up email first, just to check in. If another two days go by with no response, then go ahead and call. Hiring season is chaotic, and your email really could have gotten lost in the shuffle. Second, if the email has conflicting or unclear information that you can’t clarify over email. For example, it says your interview is at “Lincoln Elementary” but there are two Lincoln Elementary schools in the district, and the principal didn’t include an address. In that case, a quick call to clarify is fine, just keep it short. Third, if you have an emergency less than 24 hours before your scheduled interview, and you need to reschedule. If your kid wakes up with a fever or your car breaks down, calling is way better than email, because you can’t be sure the principal will check their email in time. Just apologize for the call and explain the situation, most people will understand.
Lila nodded, and sipped her coffee, and stopped twisting her resume. She asked if calling would help her stand out from other candidates, which is what most new teachers worry about. I told her that standing out comes from your application, your prepared lesson plan, and how you connect with the hiring team during the interview, not from an unnecessary call. If you want to make a good impression, the best thing you can do is follow the process they laid out for you.
She pulled out her phone on the porch, wrote up the short reply we talked through, and hit send. We spent the rest of the afternoon going over common interview questions and what she should bring to the meeting. Last I heard, she had her interview earlier this week, and she’s waiting to hear back. If she doesn’t get a response within a week after the interview, I told her she can send a quick thank you email, and if that goes unanswered, give the principal a call. For now, though, she did the right thing, and we’re just waiting. That’s how most job hunts go, anyway – you do the next right thing, and you wait to see how it turns out.
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