Mock Interviews

Last week, my seniors in English 12 did mock interviews as a part of a speech grade. English 12 has always been the more "practical" English class; however, I have always observed that there were several students in English 12 who were going to go to college. This last summer, when I knew that I was going to be teaching this class, I searched for ways to make the class both "academic" and "practical." I decided to embrace another career unit experiment and add another piece. Last year, our juniors, this year's seniors, did a career unit. Apparently, these students have done several because when I introduced this again, my seniors moaned and groaned. However, some became very excited by the prospect of interviewing with someone other than me.

It took much more to get this project off the ground than I realized, and thankfully, I had the help of Ms. Seaton, one of our business teachers; and the help of a friend of mine, Amy McGilvrey, who has worked at Manpower for several years. Amy's expertise in the business sector, and Ms Seaton's expertise in arranging mock interviews, and the community's involvement in helping interview our students made this whole experience worthwhile for the students and for me.

It is important to take this time to thank all of those people who gave up their time to come interview our students. Over two days, we had 20 people from the community come to the high school to work with our students. Some gave their entire day while others gave a couple hours. No matter the contribution, it was all significant and gave our students an engaging, "real-world" experience. Interviewing skills will be necessary, no matter what line of work a student is pursuing. These community members offered our students valuable feedback, both at the time of the interview and on rubrics, that helped the students better understand the interview process and what they needed to do to better prepare themselves for interviews. I was impressed by the positive comments that these adults had about our students and by the feedback I received from my students about the process.

While this was a beneficial activity for my students, I was reminded of why some teachers, including myself, hesitate to plan something like this. Besides taking much planning, and I had wonderful help, it was quite stressful on the first day, especially, giving up that control that teachers need. By the end of that day, I was mentally exhausted, but I know that my students gained more from that experience than a lesson out of a book or simply writing cover letters and resumes. Those practices our important, but actually seeing those documents come to life made more of an impact than any feedback a grade would have offered. I put a great deal of trust in my students that day to represent me and themselves well, and from the feedback I have been given, I would say they did a fantastic job.

It has been my personal goal this year to work to better engage my students, and I know that sometimes I revert back to my original ways of teaching, yet I think that I am offering my students more opportunities to take control of their education and make school more interesting and relevant. I find myself constantly questioning the lesson plans I make, which I sometimes fail to get online in time, the assignments I give, and the assessments I use. While some may see this as a sign of weakness on my part, I know it is a sign of working to better improve my classroom for my students. Have all of my students responded? No. However, do I see more working to challenge themselves at higher levels? Yes, and that makes the questioning and constant planning worthwhile.