the other day, i was filling out a job application for a teaching job. the application required essay questions and one of the questions was, "explain a difficult situation you have encountered with a student. what steps did you take to resolve the problem and was it resolved successfully? how did you know? should a similar situation arise in the future, how would you act differently and why?"
i procrastinated answering this question for longer than i can remember putting anything off. i mean, months and months and months.... i was really struggling to recall a challenging situation that, if explained, would be a good representation of my classroom management skills. i've been lucky in my (short) time teaching - i've had pretty great classes and haven't run into anything major that would really fit here. of course i've had challenges, every day is a challenge in the life of a teacher, so i had to think of something.
i finally sat down and told myself i was going to respond. i typed a full 600 word answer, edited my work, and then as i was re-reading it a final time, i realized that the problem was centered around a parent conference and wasn't actually a challenging situation with a student, it was a challenging situation with a parent! so, back to square one. i opened a new document and started over. as i was typing out a second response, i realized i was explaining another problem that could have been avoided without obsessive parental involvement.
and then i found this article from CNN in september.
can i get an AMEN?!
No comments:
Post a Comment