The story continues (with misc. photo)

...so I waited to hear whether or not I’d be invited for an interview. Within a couple of weeks, I received the good news that I would be interviewing the following Saturday. But what I found really interesting was that the interview was going to take up to six hours! They gave me an overview of the process, which let me know what to expect and what I needed to bring with me. The biggest piece I had to prepare in advance was a five-minute lesson. Since I had never taught in a classroom setting before I was a bit nervous about presenting my lesson, even though I was confident that it was well thought out. When I arrived, I noticed that there were a lot of people interviewing. After an introduction to the selectors and an overview of the program, we were divided into groups of seven or eight and off we went. In addition to the lesson, we wrote an essay and had a long group discussion while being observed. It was all very interesting. The final part of the day was one-on-one interviews. When it was all said and done, I was felt very good about my performance and would have been quite confident in receiving a spot except that I had heard that there were other interview sessions like this one and that only 20-25 of us were going to be selected. I quickly did the math and came to the conclusion that they would be interviewing over 100 people, and with those kinds of odds I made it a point not to raise my hopes too high.

Welcome to my classroom! 

Okay, so it’s not the prettiest classroom in the world. It actually looks better in this photo than in real life. But that’s okay, because it’s my classroom. I haven’t written much about my career change on this blog, but now that the transition is complete and I’m starting this new journey, it’s time to look back at my summer. It all started when I was looking for a job and noticed a listing for “Rhode Island Teaching Fellows” and wondered to myself what that was all about. I had already been thinking about teaching and taking some preliminary steps towards that career change (subject matter exams, etc.) so when I read what it was all about I was very intrigued. It sounded right up my alley - an intensified, fast-paced, competitive teacher preparation program that would put me in a classroom much faster and for far less money than a regular teacher prep program. One problem... the deadline for applying was that very day! It was already about 6:00 p.m. and the application process was complex. It took quite a while to gather everything I needed and complete the application, but I finished it that night. Then I just left it in the hands of fate to decide if this fork in the road would be the one I would travel. To be continued...