Is It Inappropriate to Call About a Job Interview If the Principal Emailed First? A Teacher’s Perspective
The sticky vinyl table at our local coffee shop smelled like burnt coffee and cherry syrup, and Lila’s 7-year-old was camped by the play structure stacking foam blocks while we twisted around the same question for 20 minutes. She’d applied for a 3rd grade lead position at the new elementary campus 20 minutes outside town, and three days prior, the principal had sent a confirmation email for her interview the following Friday. Now Lila had a problem: her daughter’s school had a scheduled half-day that Friday, and the before-school care she relied on was closed. She needed to shift the 1pm interview to 10am, and she couldn’t stop asking if calling to ask was out of line.
“If they reached out via email first, shouldn’t I only email them?” she said, twisting her phone so hard her knuckles went white. “I don’t want to seem pushy. I don’t want to interrupt her. What if she thinks I can’t follow unwritten rules?”
I get the overthinking. I’ve been job searching in K-12 education for the better part of 10 years, moving from a long-term sub position to a 4th grade classroom to my current role as a literacy specialist, and I’ve sat in that same sticky coffee shop chair stressing over the exact same question. There’s so much unspoken pressure on teacher candidates to be perfect, to never ruffle a single feather, to follow every unwritten rule that job search bloggers lay out. One of the most common of those rules is that you have to communicate through the same channel the hiring manager used first. If they emailed, you email. No exceptions.
But that’s not the rule I’ve seen play out in real schools. Two years ago, I was up for a literacy coach position at a middle school 30 minutes away, and the principal emailed me to lock in an interview time on a Wednesday afternoon. The week before, my district moved all elementary parent-teacher conferences to that exact Wednesday, and I couldn’t leave my campus early to make the 1pm slot. I sat on the problem for 48 hours, drafting and deleting three different emails, because I was convinced calling would make me look unorganized. Finally, the front office secretary at my school told me to just call 10 minutes before school started and leave a quick message.
I did exactly that. I called at 7:45am, when I knew most principals were in their office grabbing coffee before the first bell, left a 25-second voicemail that stated my name, the position I was interviewing for, my question, and my phone number, and by 9:30 that same morning the principal called me back. She’d already forgotten she had a district meeting scheduled right after my original interview time, and moving it to 10am worked way better for her too. I got the job offer a week later, and when I mentioned the last-minute switch in my first meeting with her, she said she’d actually appreciated the call. Her inbox gets over 100 emails a day, she said, and quick, time-sensitive questions get buried for days if you send them via email.
That’s the nuance no one talks about when they’re giving job search advice for teachers. Calling isn’t inherently inappropriate just because the principal reached out via email first. It only becomes inappropriate when you don’t respect their time.
I’ve worked enough days in the main office filling in for our secretary to know how this works. Most principals aren’t sitting at their desk answering emails all day. They’re doing classroom walkthroughs, breaking up fights on the playground, meeting with parents about IEPs, and signing off on bus change forms. The only time they’re actually sitting at their desk with 10 minutes to check messages is before school or after dismissal. A quick call for a time-sensitive question about an upcoming interview isn’t an inconvenience—it’s often faster than playing email tag for three days.
That said, there are clear lines that keep a call from being inappropriate. If you’re calling to ask if you got the job yet when they told you they’d update you in two weeks and it’s only been three days? That’s out of line. If you’re calling to ask a dozen questions about the salary schedule, the curriculum, and the number of students in each grade that you could have easily found in the original job posting? That’s inappropriate. If you call at 8pm on a Sunday or during math instruction on a Tuesday? That’s not a good look.
But for a quick, time-sensitive question that needs an answer before your interview, a short call is totally fine. The concrete steps I tell every teacher who asks me this are simple: Keep your call or voicemail under 30 seconds. Lead with your name and the position you’re interviewing for, state your question clearly, leave your phone number, and thank them. Call between 7:45 and 7:55 a.m. before school starts, or between 3:30 and 3:40 p.m. right after dismissal, when principals are most likely to be available or able to get your message quickly. If they don’t answer, don’t call back twice in one day—wait 24 hours and send a short follow-up email if you haven’t heard back.
Lila ended up taking that advice. She called the next morning at 7:50, left a short message just like we practiced, and the principal called her back before the end of recess. It turned out the principal had forgotten she’d scheduled a mandatory safety training for 1pm that day, so switching to 10am worked perfectly for both of them. Lila had her interview last Friday, and she’s still waiting to hear back. She said she went into the interview way less stressed, because she didn’t spend the whole week worrying about how she’d work around the half-day and find last-minute childcare.
I still don’t think there’s a hard yes or no answer to this question. Every principal is different, every situation is different. But I do know that too many teacher candidates talk themselves out of asking for what they need because they’re scared of breaking an unwritten rule that most hiring principals don’t even follow. At the end of the day, if you’re respectful of their time, a quick call isn’t inappropriate—it’s just communicating, which is the first skill any good teacher needs anyway.
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