Had it last Friday. It was really tough. It made me sweat. Took me from the blindside, really, because I arrived mentally prepared and looking the business with my new Burberry tie.
They had me marked with the very first question, a question I fully expected and had prepared for, but nevertheless made my heart sink as it came to me: "so, Oliver, tell us what you do in your current job and how that would relate to teaching a class." To which my only honest and sane response could be, "well I do this and I do that, but it has absolutely nothing to do with teaching a class full of kids. But I would very much like you to teach me how to do it, please." But I couldn't say this, obviously, that's not the game, that's breaking the rules. I'm sorry, Jenks, but being myself isn't really an option in these situations.
So there I was: "yadda yadda blather blather". The interview was alright, though: I can actually be a good talker when necessary. Usually hitting a peak of eloquence half way through a second bottle of Rioja, granted, but I can be stirred sober, too. It was the other things we had to do that sunk me.
For example, after an introductory chat, and then a simple group exercise, we were handed a poem and told to pick out one thing to teach a Year 10 mixed ability class and devise an activity to help them "explore the issues and themes". The poem I got was worthless, which didn't help, and I was the first to be interviewed, so had a mere 20 minutes to do all this. Analysing the poem and working out what to teach from it wasn't a problem, but thinking up an "activity" with "resources" was quite clearly beyond my capacities.
I can't even tell you what my eventual solution was because I'm very ashamed of it. Consequently, when I had to present this at the end of the interview, the whole thing fell apart from the very first word. I went from speaking in long and elegant and nearly whole sentences to chaotically ejecting random words and clauses. I gave the impression, I think, that any classroom I taught would end up in anarchy. As I headed deeper in, finally getting around to "explaining" my risible and possibly insulting class "activity", I felt sure that catastrophe was behind me, and only oblivion lay ahead.
Eventually I stopped, and one of the interviewers asked: "and would the pupils, say, bring in objects from home to illustrate these past memories of which you speak?"
As you can see, he was being kind. Possibly trying to help. And my brilliant response? "Um, no, I don't think so. I think they'd be fine talking amongst themselves, actually. In, uh, groups of, uh...three." Long silence. Interviewer staring at me, askance.
Jesus Christ, Craner! Dig yourself out of this crater! You've still got to write a three page essay on literacy initiatives in secondary schools off the top of your head! Focus!
After our interviews we all had to write a three page essay on literacy initiatives in secondary schools off the top of our heads, for which we were given 40 minutes. Now, you know, I listened to you guys, and did some preparation - I looked at some books, read some newspaper articles, flicked through the NUT rags my mother keeps sending me (they are pretty embarrassing, by the way). I didn't just turn up all cocky-like, expecting to swan through with my wonderful academic qualifications and glowing professional reference and Byronic good looks. I knew it would harder than people were telling me ("they're desperate for teachers Craner! Chill."). But I could only legitimately write one side of A4 on literacy initiatives in secondary schools, which I duly did. This left me with two blank sides of A4, which needed to be filled. So I carried on. By page 3 I was entering the same disaster zone as my "class activity" debacle. I'd shot through waffle into self-parody and was approaching panic. I was getting that now familiar sea sick sensation: simultaneous motion and paralysis. It was a bit like that moment in The Perfect Storm when George Clooney and Marky Mark see the final 100ft wave rearing up in front of their boat, and they know, after all they've been though, that they're finally doomed.
My handwriting, also, was falling apart. This was possibly the most shameful thing of all. I've never had neat handwriting, I admit, but I used to have that elegant, if large and spidery, art student-style handwriting. You know the style, it's half affected, half unavoidable. But in ten years of writing nothing more than scribbled notes to myself or cards to friends and relatives, my handwriting had devolved to a horrid, blocky, childish scrawl. And, what's worse, I couldn't do anything about it. I concentrated, I sweated, trying to make my writing neater, even legible, but it didn't work. It still looked terrible.
It was a complete bloody calamity. And I know exactly why, apart from the handwriting: it was down to zero classroom experience. The other two candidates on that day were much younger than me, and not perceptibly brighter or more articulate, and both lacking my super new tie, but they had spent some time in classrooms assisting teachers and doing tuition. That gave them a lot more ammunition than I had.
I expect to get a rejection letter next week (at least, I think they would be mad to offer me place). The problem is it rathers screws up my GTTR application cycle, and I'll probably be flushed through clearing, and that will not be fun, and possibly terminal.
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