I'm two weeks into my new American adventure and so far I'd say I'm well over the jet lag hump but still slogging through my reverse culture shock. I borrowed my dad's car and drove up to NH the other day to see Mumma Weiss and that was really weird. I didn't get my driver's license until I was 24 and ready to leave for Taiwan so I'm not what you'd call an experienced driver, however getting a few thousand hours in on my Hartford has made my hyper aware and paranoid on the road. I'd almost forgotten that people here follow the rules.
But, the real idea behind this post is that I went to New York City for a job interview on Tuesday. It was for a position at a charter school called Success Academy, the main office of which was in the financial district about a five minute walk from Wall Street and the NY stock exchange.
There were five other interviewees that showed up and I think I was the oldest by at least five or six years; most of them were talking about majors, school, and graduation and such. I remember what that was like, except in my day we graduated in the snow. Uphill. Anyway, we had all applied to be a Teaching Fellow for the winter or summer cohort. This consists of working as an assistant teacher and gradually taking on more responsibility to becoming a lead teacher while also doing coursework through Touro College towards a master's degree and New York certification.
At first we got the spiel about the school's history and mission and whatnot, which was nothing that we probably didn't know already from our pre-interview research. A few videos of current teachers followed to show different subjects and teaching styles and we had to analyze and discuss them. Then we got handed a nine line poem called Keepsake, which I knew about from looking up Success on Glassdoor and despite all of my best efforts before the interview I simply couldn't find it online. Julia (Julie? Julez? If you read this I'm sorry I forgot your name!), one of the four recruitment coordinators in the room took us through the poem as a Success instructor would, using "inquiry based instruction". She asked us a lot of questions, basically, and had our brains do all the heavy lifting. It was great to watch her work us through it and I couldn't help but think: I've seen some great teachers in Taiwan, but this...this here is the real McCoy.
Then the real fun began.
We had 10 minutes to plan for a 3 minute teach back (demo) on the poem, focusing primarily on investigating and conveying the literal plot of the story and finishing right where we would start to delve into the deeper meaning behind the words. I remember thinking before the interview: Pssh, a 3 minute demo? Hah. That'll be a piece of cake.
Nope.
I haven't felt genuinely nervous when teaching in a very long time and it was, on some level, refreshing. I did like the way that the teach back was structured in that each person would do their teach back and immediately reflect on what went well and what sucked before receiving feedback. Then each consecutive person would have to incorporate each previous person's feedback from the recruiters into their demo. That is, the sixth person had 5 other people worth of notes to work into their demo, on the fly.
I volunteered to go first.
We did well overall, and I was happy to be the guinea pig by going first. But, we then had to take some of the feedback we heard for someone else or that we got directly and state that was what we were going to work on and then prep for 5 minutes before doing a 1 minute teach back. Whew.
Two writing prompts and a fifteen-minute one-on-one interview about my teaching and managing background were next and then, finally, I was done.
This whole process had taken about three hours total and I hadn't had lunch, so I decided to swing by Katz's Delicatessen before I headed into Chinatown to wait for my return bus to Boston. Katz's is the place where Meg Ryan famously faked an orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. Let me tell you, the pastrami on Rye at Katz's is so fucking good I'm not so sure that Meg was kidding around.
Fully three incredible inches of pastrami (that's what she said?).
Traffic over the Manhattan bridge on Wednesday night was pretty much a glorified parking lot and it took nearly five hours to get back to Boston. At least the interview went well and my hotel's proximity to Chinatown helped me score some beef on rice for lunch on Tuesday.
I think tonight I'll finish up this post and then spend some time reading up on other jobs in NYC and Boston and maybe watch a movie. Tomorrow I'm off to Albany see a chum from high school I haven't seen in ages and has graciously volunteered to take me on a brewery tour of the capital.
See you later, chumps.