I didn’t get that half time job at George Washington High School. I should say, I didn’t want it. It turns out that the department itself is great, a bunch of gifted young people firmly grounded in Krashen whose district scores are so high that the school has to leave them alone. It’s a long story, but I won’t be there next year.
I’ve decided to go for a school that wants me. Where I don’t have to go into an interview and say, “Can I please have a job? I need a job, please. Will you let me in, please?” My feeling is that if a job interview is set up in that way, where you have to convince people that you have value by saying the right thing, it’s just pathetic.
All I got from the people in the GWHS interview was, “Are you good enough?” Of course, that brings up the question, “What does that mean? Good enough for whom? For you and what you think good foreign language instruction is? How would you know?”
In the case of this particular interview at this high school, in a true ironic twist (as the chair of the department sat there pulling his hair out but not being able to say anything), I got grilled by a former French teacher from Georgia about methods, data collection, and classroom management. Suddenly, if I were to get this job, I realized that I had to show how I aligned with her vision, and not necessarily with my own vision of what is best for kids.
The person, now an AP, had taught French in the old way and had actually written a large part of the current Georgia standards ((I was told over 50%). The irony is that I had bashed those very standards (back in my bashing days) as kind of insane in terms of Krashen in a long series of blog posts here about two years ago – they seemed so off base in terms of the emerging research that I felt compelled to process my thoughts about them here, where I process a lot of stuff.
Those blog posts are categorized here as Georgia Foreign Language Standards. The karma is weird, right? I bash this person’s work on my blog and two years later am face to face with her trying to convince her to let me into her school.
Her job, of course, was to let me know who the boss was. No longer just a French teacher, now she had some power and was going to make sure that the department chair and I sitting around that table, both known in this district as firmly in line with Krashen and the overall district vision, didn’t get by without a bit of groveling.
It really was pathetic. Anyway, that’s the update on the job situation. I’m still looking for a half time position. I’ve had two interviews at a school much closer to home where none of the above nonsense happened and where the administration has already fully bought into the district vision. I’m waiting to hear on that. Here is the first link to the Georgia standards bashing posts (there are 20):
https://benslavic.com/blog/2009/03/07/im-glad-i-dont-teach-in-georgia-first-in-a-series/
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
4 thoughts on “Job Update”
In light of this discussion we should probably mention Bryce Hedstrom’s recent piece here on the interview process. Here is the link:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/05/04/bryce-hedstrom-on-the-interview-process/
Of course, Bryce wrote the questions and his student teacher hit each one out of the park. But, unlike in his situation, what if the interview team is not particularly aware of the research, of the potential Krashen bomb waiting to go off in their school?
The answer is simple and modeled in the wording of the answers giving by the student teacher: understate things if you don’t know your audience. If you read each answer given by the student teacher carefully, there is a level of passivity in each one – there is no “this is going to change the world” kind of preaching going on.
That’s what I did in the interview at GW. The minute comprehension based methods come up I get all excited and can’t contain myself. I wasn’t told that I was their 10th interview of the day or I certainly would have toned it down, but hey, c’est moi.
So we can learn from the way Bryce prepared his student teacher on this deal. Or just interview in places where the building team is as nuts as we are about this stuff. Wouldn’t that be the day?
By the way, I have seen other teachers who were trained in Bryce’s classroom. One came down to my former school and blew the kids away with her poise, pacing and general CI skills in a Spanish class that I should not have been teaching. I highly recommend people visit Bryce’s classroom if you are in the area to see how he gets the job done.
Sorry about the job, Ben. I dearly love the idea of public schools–they are the only hope for our country, we have to have an educated citizenry. But they can become mediocrity factories. Maybe a position in a charter school or a private school would work for you.
Thanks for that blurb too, Ben. I really enjoy teaching teachers and the student teacher situation is perfect for instilling good CI-based habits. I realized the other day that all of my 7 former student teachers are still teaching. If anyone in the Denver area wants to come observe, my school is only 45 miles north of Denver, right up I-25. We have a couple of stools in the back just for observers.
What about not from Denver? I have from 20 August to 25 August that I can play with a bit. Maybe I’ll book a flight and drop in. When does your school start?
I think you should wait until Bryce gets the ball rolling, Robert. You know what you would see in the first few months because you do the same, most likely. I go up to Bryce’s in the spring. And I suggest you stay with him for a few days or more. That is when our work is really showing results. Or you could come up and watch me, if I get the p.m. gig I want in DPS, in the afternoons and spend the mornings with Bryce. I even have an old Honda we can lend out to visitors for the I-25 run and you can stay with us and keep costs down. If the Honda is still running.