Teaching Practice Interview - please help!!

Shadow Lady

Hi, I have an interview tomorrow morning in a school in order to try to get my placement for UCD. If anyone has any tips or suggestions regarding questions or format of interview, I would be EXTREMELY grateful. I have read the advice from UCD regarding "negotiating and arranging your placement" and I understand it (though it does freak me out a little). However, I am just wondering about the type of questions that tend to be asked, how like or unlike a job interview it may be. It's unchartered territory for me so i'd like to have some idea of what MIGHT happen. Thank you for your time.

freire

Hello. I'd say don't stress so much. I only have experience of one of these things and it was fairly informal, more of a mutual introduction really. I think they just want to see you and speak to you in person so they know you're not an (obvious) maniac.

I might be erroneous in the assumption that it's not really comparable to an interview for a job. You won't be getting paid and you will be a green 'apprentice' to some extent.

Do some research on the school if you haven't already, catchment area and LCA/JCSP programmes (if offered), extra-curricular stuff the school are involved with. Be enthusiastic.

Enjoy your Dip.

Dionysus

Shadow Lady wrote: »

Hi, I have an interview tomorrow morning in a school in order to try to get my placement for UCD. If anyone has any tips or suggestions regarding questions or format of interview, I would be EXTREMELY grateful. I have read the advice from UCD regarding "negotiating and arranging your placement" and I understand it (though it does freak me out a little). However, I am just wondering about the type of questions that tend to be asked, how like or unlike a job interview it may be. It's unchartered territory for me so i'd like to have some idea of what MIGHT happen. Thank you for your time.

Don't worry about it, as long as you are making sure that you apply to these schools now. I applied to about 18 schools last July and none would accept me so I just gave up on the PGDE. This year I didn't make the same mistake; I had two interviews this week. There were two people in each interview and while it was informal the questions were tough such as 'How would you manage a group of 13 year-old students?' and even, to my surprise, 'You're very soft-spoken, are you sure you'd be able to shout at the class if that was necessary?'

I was just very candid and honest throughout; much more so than I had anticipated. In both cases the interviewees viewed my academic qualifications as something that could undermine my teaching and kept pointing out that teenagers are different to undergrads who want to be in the class. I just agreed with them that academic skills can be quite different from teaching skills and that I was conscious that this was my weak point. However, I quickly proceeded to talk about what I could bring to the post, how the same determination which made me get the PhD would drive me to make my students succeed and so on. I think they did appreciate that I was very down to earth and after I had answered the principal sort of apologised for the question and noted that I was doing the PGDE in the first place to learn these skills.

In the second school the first question they asked was do you know anybody who has gone to this school, and as it happened I did. Try and find somebody whom you know that went to the school as that breaks the ice I felt.

Your timing is very good so really try and arrange as many interviews as possible now as the schools I was dealing with are arranging their timetables now. In contrast to my disaster last July (see my old messages here last summer), the two schools offered me the post. I took the 2nd school as it was the first school I put my CV into and much nearer UCD and my preferred school for the past year. The people in the first interview were really, really sound as well. I had to ring them back before lunchtime that day as they were under pressure to fill the PGDE vacancy and they were asking could I not change my mind, which was a novel experience for me considering my disaster last summer.

As cliched as it might sound, just be yourself and make clear that you are punctual, hard-working, and most of all have a genuine interest in students and teaching. I made it clear to them that teaching for me was much more than the subject but a means to allow students to become more confident in every area of their life and that when I teach I am conscious of that. It was that dynamic which made teaching fulfilling and rewarding and why I wanted to do it. Just show a bit of passion like that. You'll be absolutely fine. Go n-éiri an t-ádh leat.