CLAFLIN UNIVERSITY

Teacher Interview Questions

Stefon Bowman
Mrs.Saxon [Pick the date]

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1. What is your current teaching assignment? Brookdale Elementary School, Orangeburg SC 2.What is the demographic make-up of your class? -My class consists of twenty-eight students. The students in the class are all African American and they are more boys than girls (18 boys, 10 girls) 3. Why did you choose the teaching profession? -I honestly felt like the teaching profession chose me. I enrolled in teachers cadet in High School. I immediately fell in love with the profession of teaching and the dynamics of understanding and educating children. 4. Do you feel that your courses/student teaching preparation prepared you adequately for your own classroom? Please explain your answer. I believe that I was thoroughly prepared for my own classroom. I have little classroom management issues and I give credit to my student teacher and professors from college. Although the framework in this district is different, the material and ideas I have for lesson plans appear to be adequate for my principal and district office officials. 5. Do you find that planning for your classes is a chore? If yes, why? - No I find planning for my class exciting because I see the potential in my students. 6. What would you recommend for a beginning teacher that might help me not to see lesson planning as a chore? -One thing I recommend is to get familiar with different lesson plan frameworks. By doing so, when you get to your new district and introduced to lesson plan framework that was different from your student teaching style, you will be comfortable enough to adjust smoothly. 7. Describe your strategies that comprise your classroom management system? Are your strategies effective, in your opinion? Please explain. -My classroom management system is setup for students to monitor their own behavior and hold themselves accountable for their own behavior. I do not have a list of rules and consequences in my classroom. However, my first day in the classroom, I made it perfectly clear that students had to follow all school rules. Students decided on a list of agreements to follow such as: one person talk at a time, help classmates, and to be kind to classmates. This system is working out well so far. 8. What advice would you give me, as a beginning teacher, that would help me to adjust to having my own classroom and students that would help me to be an effective teacher?

- First is to have a classroom management plan developed. This will help maximize your instruction time, and minimize some of the anxiety of being a first year teacher. Make sure your classroom management plan is effective and tailored to fit your personality. Secondly, get as much experience with lesson planning as possible. Lesson planning can be very tedious and hard for some, the more experience you get hopefully the less of a problem it will be. Finally, please understand that you are not the savior of education nor superman coming to save the day. Do what you can and do it to the best of your ability. Not every day will be a terrible day and everyday will not be a great day, but hopefully with your time and effort, everyday will be a meaningful day moving in the right direction of educating your students. 9. Which do you find to be more successful with assessing your students? teacher made or commercially made assessments. Please explain. - I think a balance of both is the best method. Teacher made assessments are successful because since you are the one making them they will be directly aligned to your instruction, also you can give a mixture of different types of question such as open ended, fill in the blank, multiply choice, etc. Commercially made assessments are often multiple choice. I am a fan of commercially made assessments because they are usually aligned with the standardized test as much as they possibly can be. The students will see multiply choice question on the PASS Test, and the format of commercially made assessments fit that of the PASS test well at least the one that I use. I am a fan of using them both. With all that being said if I had to pick one I would pick the commercially made assessments ones that are PASS like, that if I had to choose. 10. If you had it to do over again, would you choose teaching as a profession? Why or Why not? -If I had a chance to do it all over again I will definitely still choose teaching as a profession. I can honestly say I wake up every morning not dreading to go to work, or wishing I had another job. I actually am enjoying what I am doing regardless of the amount of pressure that Im under and place on myself. The main reason why I think I would choose teaching again is because I feel like teaching chose me not that I chose to teach. I love teaching and I am working hard to perfect a craft that is always changing.