Instructional Design Interview Nightmares
Photo by Jose Losada on Unsplash
I was walked to a windowed room that had a view out to the gently rolling green treed slopes of the campus. The ivy on the brick buildings was dying down in the November chill. Three panelists sat opposite me, with their backs to the view and the interview began.
I was interviewing for an educational technologist-type position at an Ivy League university. Even though I had a relative that worked there, our last names were different and I had done the application and interview prep entirely on my own. I didn’t want to get this position through any nepotism.
As per usual in the course of human events, you can prepare for one set of circumstances (standing on my own, separate from my relative in the hiring process) and then you experience another set of circumstances.
Sidebar: I remember when I took care of a cohort of student teachers-to-be and one of them was in Tennessee (READ BIBLE BELT) and was a youth pastor becoming a Biology teacher. He shared with our cohort group that he was frightened about teaching evolution to kids that he was simultaneously counseling as a youth pastor. Then the first day of student teaching arrived.
It went OK, according to the student teacher.
But it was what happened at the end of the day that threw him.
The football coach came to his classroom after all the kids had left. The coach put his arm around the student teacher and said to him that he ‘would pass every one of the football players in his classes’.
We all sat stunned for a moment and then started sputtering “That’s not right!” and “He can’t do that!” and “That’s intimidation!”
The student teacher immediately reported the conversation to HIS teacher lead and we were informed that the situation was “taken care of.”
Whew. We laughed. We prepared for an evolution-creation debate and instead received football intimidation. See the detail of Tennessee meant something.
It’s classic that a teacher prepares for a big lesson. And then something breaks.
Surviving events like this is what makes you a good teacher. Experience. Not lessons.