So I’ve officially taken over two classes for four weeks
now. That’s right. Full duty. My cooperating teacher allows me
the freedom to create activities, agendas, and assessments. Although I’ve taken over two classes of
direct instruction, the rest of my day is devoted to co-teaching. Here’s a peek in to my every day
routine.
7:30 Get to school, start the computer, and get all of the
days materials ready for the day.
8:00 It’s show time, wait for the pledge and Announcements.
8:05 Start your bell work activities for the day and take
role.
8:10-9:22 Instruction, discussion, reading, writing,
discussion, etc. Everyday Activities
9:22-9:27 Close out the day, take advantage of the recency
effect and preview the agenda for the next couple of days.
On top of my planning, teaching, co-teaching, preparation
for my methods class and working Thursday-Saturday , I have had to take
advantage of job/career fairs as well as my state portfolio assessment. You could say that I have had the full,
yanked-in-ever-direction, experience that every teacher feels. I’ve talked this over with my cooperating
teacher several times and she has given me some very insightful advice: “You
will find out quickly how to save time, and make time and you will only learn
this through time and experience.”
Job-Search
So I first entered the job-market about a month ago. It was my first career fair. I walked in to this career fair only to get
interview experience. I heard that
employers rarely hire on the spot, unless your interview skills and credentials
blow them away. I only signed up with
one interview and it went great!! I
honestly thought that I had a real job opportunity but it was out-of-state… Which
presented a problem but it was doable.
As I’m departing the career fair, I ran in to my old
football coach from high school, only to find him at one of our conference
rivals tables. How could he?! Just
kidding, how couldn’t he?! He had recently accepted the athletic director’s
position and he smiled as he approached me.
He asked me how I was doing, what year I was in school, and if I would
be interested in moving to southwest Kansas.
It’s funny how fate works.
The next week, I had received a phone call from a principal,
and he had received my resume from my old football coach and he would like to
set up an interview. You could say I was
ecstatic! My first real
interview. Who knows maybe I’ll actually
get the job!
Interview
I was so nervous, yet so ready for this interview. I drove two and a half hours to get home, and
another hour and a half to get to the school that I was interviewing at. I had a leather portfolio and my suit and tie
ready to go. I had everything ready for
this interview.
WRONG
Uh oh, I forgot to prepare questions for the
interviewer. I had researched the school
and planned to discuss the contextual factors during the interview
anyways. Crap.
THANK YOU GOOGLE
This link will take you to a number of interview questions
that you can ask your interviewer. I
believe that having questions prepared is the best thing to do for an
interview. IMPORTANT NOTE: make sure to have at least 5-7 questions
prepared. My interview was very
conversational, structured around their questions but I felt very comfortable
being myself. Having said that, about
four of my questions were covered during my interview so I was left with two. But thank goodness they were very
informative-to the point that I asked even more questions.
My tips to prospecting teachers going in to an interview
1. Don’t be nervous
2. Be yourself
3. It’s okay to laugh
4. It’s okay to be wrong and have flaws (They asked me a
question about zone of proximal development and how I planned to implement it
into my classroom. Granted, I had just
taken the PLT and gotten the question right, but they had said that I was the
first person to get it right)
5. Breathe. I took a
lot of deep breaths
6. Expect the unexpected—the zpd question…. Wasn’t expecting
that one.
7. Practice sample
interview questions and have responses such as classroom management practices,
why you wanted to become a teacher, why you, and why me questions prepared.
The interview process is always the icing on the cake for
teacher candidates but in the end, it’s our cake.
