Learning Experience

I certainly had an interesting day. I went to my first interview for a teaching job. Whilst I didn't get the job (which didn't surprise me), it was an interesting, not to say slightly surreal, experience. Along with six other candidates I found myself as part of a rota moving from room to room, performing various tasks, including a formal interview, a presentation and a teaching session. of course, the system inevitably broke down and various of us found ourselves high and dry, or suddenly being ushered into a room to be faced by a class of seventeen year olds waiting to be taught, when you were expecting an interview. It was a bit like the way they test trainee doctors (if I'm to believe those hoary old Doctor films with Dirk Bogarde and James Robertson Justice), shoving them into a consultation room where they find themselves confronted by a 'patient' presenting all manner of bizarre symptoms, which they have to diagnose.

Anyway, it all seemed like a pretty way to select teaching staff to me. Indeed, I was somewhat reassured by the fact that those candidates who had attended other interviews reckoned that today's experience was more complex than the norm. Personally, I would have expected more emphasis and time to have been devoted to the teaching exercise, and quite frankly I really didn't see the point of the presentation we had to give to other teaching staff - the information would have been bettered conveyed as part of the formal interview. But hey, what do I know? If this is the way they want to do things, I don't have much choice but to go along with it! I've got another interview at a different college in a couple of weeks - I'm bracing myself for another day of fun and games. At least this time I'll be prepared!