Mock Interviews

 Today we had our mock interviews in class. I volunteered to be an administrator during the interviews. My specific role was to interview people from the inquiry angle. I had come up with four questions centered around the process of inquiry and how my colleagues turned potential employees would implement it in their future classrooms. The four questions I asked were, "Which of the five E’s would you consider the most important to the Inquiry model?", "What technologies would you incorporate into an inquiry lesson based on Ancient Greece to help students engage with your content in the elements of history, geography, philosophy, etc?", "Why do you think this technology will bring the process of inquiry to life?", and
"How does providing students with divergent/open-ended questions (that require multiple answers) encourage higher order thinking and how would you incorporate them into your classroom?" These were the three main questions that I had given to individual people to answer. To start off the interview, I had asked all of the groups as a whole, "If the four of us are the Fantastic Four of Social Studies teaching, what superhero would you be to better our school’s inquiry curriculum?" This was a question that I had picked up when I went to future teacher night at Marist Collge a few months ago. One of the principals that was presenting said that he will start by asking the person he is interviwing if they know who the Fantastic Four are. He said that many of the people will become fraseled at that point because they get confused on wether or not he really means the super heroes. That is not the make or break moment of the interview, the make or break moment is what happens afterward. Can you think on your toes and come up with a superhero that you would be to help better your school or will you freeze up and be thrown off for the rest of the interview. I like that this question really had no answer right answer, it was more of they way the person answered (with confidence, creativity, or confusion) that said more about the person. I think it really embodies the qualities you need to be a teacher, confidence, creativity, and the ablity to adapt to situations you cannot prepare for. 

Through out the interview many of my colleuges seemed very prepared for my questions on inquiry. Consistently form group to group, people did the best on my first question pertaining to the five E's. Everyone said that elaborate was the most improtant E. I agree that elaborate is the most improtant E because a student can find all of the information that is asked of them and thier group can work together to answer a question, but if the student cannot demonstraight why they have come to that conclusion, you cannot truly know if they understand what they have found. The one question that seemed to consitently stump the people I asked was my question about open ended questions. Sveral of the simple restated the question back to me and said that open ended questions allowed the students to have multiple answers. I was really looking for the people to say something about the studnets being able to share thier conclusions with one another to really strengthen thier knowledge on a topic and open their minds to be more accepting of different opions.

Overall, I think that my favorite part of being an admistrator for this exercise was being able to hear just how knowledgeable all of my collegues were. Everyone gave very in depth answers and really demonstrated that they possessed a great understanding of the Inquiry process. I also enjoyed asweering the questions my collegues had for me. Many of them had asked me similar quetions to what I had asked them, keeping to the theme of inquiry. I had already mentioned my answer to what the most important of the 5 E's, so I will discuss my answers to the other questions. As for the technology that I would use to engage students in an inquiry lesson about Ancient Greece, that would definitly be ThingLink. ThingLink is a great resource that can take the students on a feild trip to any where in the world at any point in time. I could bring the sudents on a trip to the Parthanon or to Ancient Athens while teaching them about thier importance. It will all the student to really experience history as it can come to life. Finally, as for my super hero, I would be Wonder Woman because I would want to encourage my student to wonder about everything and use thier wonders to guide there learning in the classroom. In the end, this was a great experience and I am glad that I got the chance to be an administrator.