My Teaching Interview

Just had my teaching interview earlier today, and if I am not mistaken is my first job interview ever. The interview panel consists of three persons, two middle age guys and one young lady. I was told by the kind teenage boy who was checking my papers for the interview that the panel is quite friendly, which kind of made me more comfortable mentally.

So the first question they asked me was not why I apply for teaching, but rather why I chose teaching despite having an Electrical Engineering degree. This question was kind of a surprise to me, but luckily I did thought able why I do not want to take on a technical job, so i answered that my years studying engineering made me want to try something else, rather than being an engineer, which i promptly continued to explain why I chose teaching.

In explaining why I decided to teach, I talked about making an impact in other people's lives, and how I had teachers who have made an impact in my life. The interview continued to the topic on who and how I would rate my teacher, and what are the qualities of a good teacher, and how to get through to students. I think my answers to this part I gave a rather nervous answer, formulating whatever could come to my mind and trying to make some sense out of it, and making it as sincere as possible.

While I am tempted to just go into NIE, I still maintained my goal and asked about contract teaching. Apparently the minimum term is 1 year, and during this period I'll get assessed by a supervisor and the principal of the school that I get allocated to. I guess it is a more stringent way of going into teaching, rather than just going straight into NIE. But still, I guess it is better to try out if teaching is suitable for me, rather than going in and ended up hating the job, and instead of teaching, I am just doing a job. So my last answer to the interviewer that I am not sure that I want to teach, is that I definitely want to teach, but as a career wise, no one can be sure that they like teaching until they actually tried it. Pity I never try out relief teaching before, but still it will not be the same. However, contract teaching involved me going straight into becoming a full-time teacher with just 2 days of training, so I wondered my starting abilitiy to immediately become a teacher.