INTERVIEW WITH THE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

Well, it was certainly an interesting morning.

A bunch of students showed up at the Education Dept. for their scheduled interviews. Filled out the signin sheet plus had to write a paragraph:

Generally Accepted Attributes of Highly Effective Teachers

1. General classroom attendance, promptness and participation

2. Attention to classroom discussion protocols

3. Social and cooperative skills

4. Attention to assignments

5. General classroom demeanor

6. Flexibility

7. Openness to and ehtusiasm for learining

The writing assignment: identify one attribute area that you consider to be a strength and explain why with an example. Then identify one attribute area that you know you need to work on and explain why or how you'd work on it.

They called us in pairs and we were interviewed by the College of Ed staff - very nice folks - don't fear - Smith is here! The interview took about 15 minutes for two people - that is it! Questions were pretty straight foward: Why do you want to be a teacher? If you had a class of "challenging" kids that did not like you - what would you do? The normal multicultural question and so on.

Afterward we attended an information meeting on the program - this was really worthwhile because you got to ask questions and were almost one-on-one and the College of Education staff did not seem as intimidating as before.

Now lastly FYI: There are 150 applications and only 90 spots....

UPDATE: Someone in class mentioned that there are not 150 applicants but rather 180! Apparently they got a surge of applications... no one know the real number - but still, it confirms that lots of people will be disappointed... so for now we just wait.