We practice by learning: Teacher Interview

During Wednesday's class, we role  played job interview's which turned out to be a great learning experience for me. How this happened is four of our peers, Jean and Felicia among them, pretended to be principal's at made up elementary schools. The rest of the class were potential candidates trying to interview for a position. I was among the candidates. In the beginning of the interview, all of the "principals" stood up and read their philosophy of education statements and what they are looking for in a teacher. After that, the principals took turns interviewing us in our fieldwork groups. To be completely honest, I was not sure what to except when it came to the questions. I tried to treat it as a real interview, and my peers as actual employers.



Some of the questions that were asked were harder than others. For example, one of the "principals" asked me what color reminded me of cooperative learning. Another asked me the first animal that came to mind when I think of a teacher. Questions like these, creative, caught me off guard, but really made me think. Up until then, I did not know what color or animal I would associate education with. However, I thought I gave good answers. For the color question and cooperative learning, I associated them with light and Easter colors such as green, yellow, and blue because those colors are opening and friendly. For the animal question, I chose a lion because they are brave, fierce, but protective which is what teachers have to be, not only inside of the classroom but outside of it as well.

                   

To be honest, even aside from these questions, I felt as if all of them were challenging. All of them required critical thinking skills. A few of the questions even had me consider a few scenarios. For example: "How would you use cooperative learning inside of your classroom? How would you use inquiry based learning for social studies or math even?" Additionally, at the end of the interview, we got to ask our interviewer questions.

I thought that this was a great learning experience because it felt authentic. I went through all (or at least most) of the motions of what an actual interview would be like. I dressed in nice clothes, I shook the interview's hand, and I even prepared a resume. While an actual interview would be more serious and more intimidating than this, I am glad we had the practice!