Middle School.. Yikes!

Today, I went on my first interview of the year! I do have to say, it was quite nerve wrecking. Not only was it the first one of the year, it was also my first middle school interview. You see, I've always prepared myself for elementary school interviews. I guess to add on, this was one of the interviews that I was hoping to get. Needless to say, I came out alive. Although I wasn't too proud of my answers I had given to the principal. After I walked out of her office, I was glad it was over. At the same time, I wanted to stay in there longer to make up for the poor answers I had given her. I rethought about her questions and thought of how I could have answered them better. I only wished this wasn't my first interview that I had have had another one to prep me for this one. My sister said I was being too hard on myself and perhaps I am. Nevertheless, I still felt I could have answered the questions better with all the target words. Anyway, what's done is done right? So what made me want to blog today was A- to get it out of my system. B- to do this assignment. C- to actually start this on going theme.

In the interview, I told her I was in this masters program. I told her how I've learned so much about how to bring an alternative teaching and learning environment to my classroom. How I can integrate technology into my classroom and so forth. In the mist of jabbering on about everything I've learned it crossed me couple times that I should perhaps explain what "telecollaborative learning projects" is or what flash, fireworks, and dreamweaver can actually do. At the same time, I didn't want to insult her intelligence by assuming she didn't know what those are. So my question for my first formal blog is "how do you explain to people what you actually do, to have them fully comprehend with out offending their intelligence?".

She asked me if I had any questions for her and I asked her how much technology is used in this school. I was glad to hear that are ample resources for everything I would like to execute if I were given the position at the school. I continued to tell her about all the great ideas of how to incorporate what I've learned these 2 qts into my class. It was my way of showing her how I would find different ways to deliver the contents to my students and perhaps make up some points I might have lost in the interview. To my surprise, the school is already doing some of the things I've mentioned. I felt sort of silly being excited about something NEW that I could bring to the school when in fact that's already "old news". What a bummer on giving extra points to my interview but great for the school and especially the students! Maybe I should have revisited "The Horizon Report-2006 Edition" prior to the interview so I would've been able to reference to more ways of integrating technology into the classroom. Perhaps this would've "wow-ed" her in some ways.

I was also thinking back to my student teaching experiences. Both were in a lower socio-economic district. With that, I know for a fact that there weren't any emphasis in technology in the classroom. I think I was really stuck in that realm, thinking I could bring something new to the school. I really saw the digital divide from this school today and the ones I've student taught for. What a big difference!