Section 6: Teacher Candidate Teacher Interview Video

Introduction

In this section, Section 6: Teacher Candidate Teacher Interview Video, I will include a

recording of a mock interview, in which I will answer realistic interview questions. The purpose

of this mock interview is to demonstrate how I can articulate my experiences orally in a realistic,

practical situation. Additionally, by posting my interview, work samples, and information on the

website I am able to demonstrate my competency with technology, an important teaching

competency.

This section is divided into four sections. First, this introduction, in which the contents of

the section are outlined. Second is the mock interview video and a link to my Weebly website.

The third section, Teacher Candidate Interview Questions & Responses, contains a transcript of

the questions I responded to and my answers. Including this is important for accessibility for this

document. Finally, in the Conclusion, I will emphasize highlights of this section and portfolio.

Teacher Candidate Interview Questions & Responses

1. Briefly share a little about your background experiences that have led you to choose a

career in education?

a. My work history, which you can see in detail on my resume in the Section 2 page

of the Weebly site, starts as a gymnastics and cheerleading coach. Between the

ages of 14 and 25, throughout the end of my undergraduate degree, I coached

adult classes, teenagers, mom and tot, children, and special needs teams. I loved

it, it was a great job. It was a job where I could arrive in any mood, and when I

left work I’d leave in a better mood. I realized after working in other careers that

this was no longer the case, so I decided to come back to education because I like
 it. As for everything else, I studied phys-ed in undergrad because I thought I

wanted to do physio. That didn’t work out, so I started in finance. I had a career in

finance as a hedge fund administrator and operations officer. I did that for a

couple year, which was ok, but I didn’t love it. So when my husband and I got

married we decided to go travelling – we spent a year abroad across 3 different

continents, it was a great experience – and while we were abroad we talked about

it. I said I want to go back to education and he supported me in going for it, so

here I am at the end of a teacher preparation course!

2. What have you learned in your teacher training program that will make you an excellent

classroom teacher and colleague?

a. I do believe that I will make an excellent classroom teacher and colleague. I

believe that a lot of the traits that will make me a good colleague were honed prior

to this program, in my prior career in a professional setting. I do think this

program will help me become an excellent teacher. Particularly, some skills I got

here is a knowledge of educational theories and best practices, which I

implemented throughout my artifacts. These include different teaching methods

that are research backed, which I can employ in my classroom. Things like

differentiation – product differentiation, process differentiation, etc., a belief in

constructivism, an understanding that really my job is to help students build their

own meaning. And aside from me teaching about these theories, what this

program has taught me to do is to develop instructional methods and plans that are

supported by best practices and research. Going forward I will be able to support
 my educational plans and decisions with appropriate research and that is a great

thing I have attained in this program.

3. Provide us with an example of a lesson you taught. How did you integrate it with other

curriculum areas, address the CCLS, technology, student engagement and motivation?

What were the results of the lesson?

a. Obviously, I’m still in the teacher training program, so I haven’t delivered that

many lessons yet. One lesson I did deliver was an ELA segment on non-fiction

stories and myth stories. We examined two stories as examples of these two

genres, and through these examples we compared and contrasted the two genres

and studied a bit about what and why these genres are important, and why that

matters to us as readers. These lessons were related to common core quite

thoroughly because my material and topics were pulled right from the Journey’s

program, which is entirely based in common core requirements. It made it quite

easily to build a lesson based on common core standards. We only had one small

table on the side of the room, so not very much technology was available to us. I

incorporated white bards for brainstorming as much as possible, but space and

resources limited the technology use. I did my best to integrate science concepts

into this lesson. Particularly, the non-fiction story was about animals and

scientific experiments, so we integrated discussions on the scientific process, the

kinds of observations taken, and also taxonomy. Because the story included

proper Latin names, we were able to take about what taxonomy is, what are

proper names for animals, how is this classified, and in that way we brought in
 science into the lesson. We tried to bring in student engagement and motivation

by having students respond to the topics personally. We talked about the genres

themselves, how this is relevant to students as readers, why they should know this

in the future, what they prefer to read, which story they liked better, and so on.

These students liked that these stories were about animals most of all. In the end, I

feel students liked the lesson. They learned quite a bit, they liked the topic, and

they were quite motivated to do a good job. In the end they wanted another day to

work on the paragraphs so that they could make a good, polished copy. The

students were motivated to do that, so overall I think the lesson was quite

successful in motivating students to engage and retain the information.

4. How will your knowledge of the current trends in education inform you as an educator in

our district/board/school?

a. There’s two current trends in education that I will be able to contribute to in my

future school or board. The first is technology use, or using assistive computer

based programs in education, for example using Lexia for struggling readers. I

think my knowledge about this trend and my knowledge in general about

technology will help me to a) identify good resources from bad resources, and b)

recommend good resources to my school as they become available. In my prior

career in finance, I was involved in an onboarding process where we launched a

whole new platform and a whole new working system. I was a lead on that

process and an integral part in testing it and ensuring that it worked properly

before the department adopted it. I think that experience will help here because I
 will be able to work with a program for a short time and provide a decent report

of the strengths, weakness, breakability, and content of the program. I will do this

in my own classroom to find the best resources, and at the school or board level I

am happy to do the same.

5. Why should we hire you instead of the other applicants we have interviewed?

a. This is a good question. I’d say there are three unique things that I offer. The first

is that I’m good at technology. I mentioned this before throughout my portfolio

and artifacts, as well as this interview, however I truly feel this is a unique and

important skill. In addition to using technology very closely in my prior jobs, it is

also a hobby of mine. I build my computers at home, I’m great at troubleshooting,

and I’m good at finding and employing meaningful technology. This means I

won’t just be using a smart board for a presentation, or for students to drag shapes

around for fun. I’m interested in integrating good ways to use technology,

motivating stations, or finding ways to help students learn to research properly.

Good search engine use is a skill that has to be taught. I have the skill to use

myself, and the ability to teach others to do this as well. So technology use and

comfort is definitely the first reason you should hire me. The second reason is, as

this is my second career, I bring a breadth of experience from my life before I

began my teaching journey. I think this can really help enrich both a classroom

and a school community with a wider range of experiences children can learn

from. Having worked somewhere else outside of a school (as opposed to having

been a student then immediately returning to school), I bring experience in

building professional relationships, as well as a highly developed professional

(children, parents, colleagues) on a daily basis. In addition, I believe all the

travelling I have done is useful experience. We spent extended periods of time in

many locations – for example we were in Japan for over a month at a time. We

really were motivated to visit museums, cultural sites, to stay at small,

independently run hostels, and to really get to know the people in the places we

visited. I think this breadth of experience will help me implement genuine

culturally responsive teaching strategies and in bringing a ‘whole person’ to the

classroom for the students to learn from. The third thing is that I like teaching. I

am a try-hard at life, and I can’t stop myself from wanting to put in the extra

effort. I have strong desires to run clubs. I have a lot of experience in athletics – I

was an athlete growing up – I’m a certified gymnastics and cheerleading coach, I

could coach soccer, volleyball, baseball. If you want a cheerleading squad, I can

coach that safely, and I have a desire to do so. Athletic clubs is something I love

to do, and it is something that schools are looking for. In addition to athletic clubs,

technology based clubs are something that is a hobby of mine, and I’m happy to

lead computer clubs, esports clubs, robotics clubs, etc. These are areas of

expertise I have, and I’m looking to participate in extras for.

Conclusion

In this section I conducted a mock interview in which I responded to realistic interview

questions in a video. This video is attached here, in addition to being posted to the website linked

above. I have also included a transcript of my responses here for those who cannot or do not
wish to listen to the audio of the video. Throughout this portfolio I have introduced myself as a

person and a teacher candidate. I have explained my personal educational philosophy. I have

listed and described the professional standards, as well as connecting eight artifacts of my own

creation to these competencies. I have done my best to demonstrate my readiness to perform

adequately as a beginning teacher. Thank you for your time in reading this portfolio.