interview

Thursday morning I interviewed for a job at Brighton High School! I was really excited that my screening interview with the district translated into something.

The interview was an interesting one. It seemed they'd read the notes about me from the screening because they only questions they asked me were anecdotal and convoluted (ie. Say you assigned an essay comparing two characters from "MacBeth" and it had these criteria blah, blah, blah, blah. And let's say a student turned in a essay that was the five paragraphs but it was blah, blah, blah, blah. How would you grade it?). I gave my answer and the woman questioned my answer about the type of rubric I'd use (Well, I use a 5 point rubric so how would you explain your 3 point rubric to the students?). It was rather odd because I got the feeling there were some key words they were expecting me to use and I missed them. The next question was "What types of writing assignments do you usually give?" and the final questions was "What was your favorite writing assignment you've given and why?" My answer for this question was a compare/contrast and persuasive essay involving "West Side Story" and "Romeo and Juliet". When I told them students write about which story is more tragic, one of the women said, "I bet they choose the one with the most deaths, naturally."
"Well, actually," I said, "they usually say that because Maria ends up alone, that story is more tragic."
To that answer, the two English teachers trading questions looked at each other and smiled, for the first time.

I have no idea how it went. They aren't making their decision until the end of next week. The other odd thing is that the school is on trimesters. Students have to take 2 "tri's" of English to get credit but they don't have to take is consecutively or from the same teacher. How weird.

For the day before the interview and the day of I was feeling really confused about if I should take the job or not if it's offered to me. I would lose about 2k by switching districts and have to pay a lot more for insurance. But, I really want to move to a high school again. And, Brighton is a good school with good students. But, I am department chair at my school now and I feel like I can do a lot of good there. And I am involved with some projects for the district and the state concerning the new assessments for the new Common Core.

Thursday evening after thinking it through, I decided that the job at Brighton is not the right thing to do. As soon as I decided that, the confusion went away and I felt a ton better about everything. The Spirit is so amazing! The Abu Dhabi thing felt the same way-- really cool opportunity-- not the right thing to do at all.

Friday at lunch we had a discussion about a news article printed concerning some issues with the superintendent of Canyons. I really don't want to work in the Canyons District. I keep hearing nothing be problems about it and the leadership.