Interview Skills Success

My task for today was to attend an interview, but I was perplexed.

I stepped into a 3rd grade classroom having spent my entire college career learning how to teach high school effectively.  Consequently, I prepared as well as I could by choosing to read a children's book, which I now enjoy--having read it 4 times over.


Success?  I put "visuals" on the board to keep everyone's attention on the plot--a timeline of travels from Cairo to the Cleopatra ship to a Bayou in Louisiana, to the BGBBB (Bad Guy/Big Bad Brother) Exotic Animal Farm and back to Cairo.  I gave directions for each student to Clap with two hands like a Crocodile each time I said the main character's name: Bill; for each student to flap like a bird every time I said Pete, Bill's toothbrush and best friend--presumably the Pluvianus aegyptius
(the Egyptian Plover or the Crocodile Bird).

All of the teachers who interviewed me, in a semi-intimidating group of six, were very knowledgeable, and I was honored to interview with their charter school, irregardless (a word that exists only ironically in the dictionary) of my inexperience with third graders.