sbally’s blog

1.                                                          Informal Plan for Interview

1. Mrs. Donnelly: 10^th Grade English Teacher, Elyria High School.

2. I will conduct the interview via phone. I have a good relationship with the teacher to where I can interview her over the phone. Also, I will not be able to make it home to interview her in person before the deadline.

 

1. I hope to learn from hearing someone who has had first-hand experience with teaching writing. I have always had a strong relationship with this English teacher and I think she (above others I’ve had) can explain her experience with teaching more clearly and in more useful manner. My experience with her has taught me she is very good with words and explanations. Finally, I know she has had a vast number of teaching positions building up to her current position. The school she teaches at currently (my former high school), has somewhat of a difficult group of students to work with. It is a low-income town that has struggled with student behavior issues. I think learning from Mrs. Donnelly about how to work with such students in the field of writing will certainly better prepare me as a future educator.

 

                                      Working Questions:
1. How long have you been teaching English? What sort of other positions or grades have you taught leading up to your current position?

2. What do you remember most, both positive and negative experiences, about your first year of teaching?

3. What was the biggest surprise to you in your first year of teaching an English course? Did that surprise in any way change how you taught in the following years?

 

1. In retrospect, how do you think you could have been better prepared prior to starting teaching? Is there anything additional that you wished you would have been taught in your teacher-training?

 

1. If you had to pick only one book for a writing teacher to read, what would it be?

 

1. What do you find most difficult about teaching or facilitating students to write?

 

1. What do you find to be the most important quality or trait that a teacher of writing must posses?

 

1. How have you seen English classes changing since the time you began until today? How do you think it will change in the future?

 

1. How do you typically go about designing your course syllabus and planning your lessons throughout the year?

 

1. English classes are oftentimes seen as being based around open-discussion. Do you support this idea within your classroom? How do you create a safe and productive discussion community?

 

Questions about Assignment

1. The teacher I selected teaches the 10^th grade English which is just out of my concentration. Do you think her responses will be drastically different than those of a middle school English teacher? Will they give me the wrong impression as a future middle school teacher?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 11:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.