You're Hired!

So today was interview day, we all dressed in our best and everyone got into their fieldwork groups. As an administrator for the day I sat with my other administrator collages and we each stood up and introduced ourselves and gave background information on ourselves and the schools we were representing. I was an administrator at Happy Feet Elementary school where I was principle since 2008. After our introductions we started at one group and rotated around to each of the other 3 groups. I started with a warm up question about why each person wanted to become a teacher, and what there teaching philosophy was. With this warm up question we were able to see who might be the leader in the group and answer the question first. After the warm up question I asked each person a different question and enjoyed hearing how each person responded differently from each group. Some of the responses I got were similar to how I interpreted the question. One question I asked was along the lines of, independent practice is very important to a child's understanding of the direct instruction lesson, how would you approach a situation where the parents were overstepping the boundaries and doing the independent practice for them. The answer I agreed with most was along the lines of calling the parents and staying in contact with them so they understand that it is important for their children to succeed by doing the work themselves, by parents doing the work it enables the children to succeed and for us to evaluate them effectively. Also, as teacher we are able to see what a student understands themselves and what might be done for them at home. Once we had gone through each group the administrators had a meeting to decide who we would hire from the interview. It was unanimous that Susan and Julia would get the jobs. We appreciated their enthusiasm and their answers stuck out to each of us. Even though it was a mock interview we were able to tell that there answers came from the heart and what they truly believed. So congratulations Julia and Susan...