Planning your own interview lessons?

[MissPrimaryCrafts]

I don't want to come off as bitchy, but I'm a trainee and I'm in a FB group for trainees. Every day there are so many posts from people saying 'I have an interview, here's the task for the interview lesson, any ideas for what I should do?'

And I think, isn't the whole point for YOU to come up with the idea? Because the school wants to see your ideas, not someone else's? I know people want to get advice and do well in interview, and I understand for really tricky tasks (I know someone who was given 'science with a literacy base' which needs some unpacking) - but if you can't come up with an idea for an interview how are you going to do the job?

Does this frustrate anyone else?

No. Expecting teachers to create stuff from scratch with no support is pointless workload-creating. It’s not cheating to use other people’s resources/ideas, it’s part of the job.

I don’t care if they come up with an original idea for a lesson, download it from TES or get advice from another teacher. What matters is if they can teach it, interact with the kids well, explain ideas clearly and react to what actually goes on in the classroom.

I agree with you. I don't expect anyone to reinvent the wheel, but do think someone should be capable of planning an appropriate lesson for interview.
If part of that planning means referring to existing materials then I don't mind because choosing to select appropriate materials is part of planning.
If someone can't look at revision guides, resource sites, their school's materials and come up with a coherent lesson then I'd have questions about their competency as a teacher.

Asking for advice is fine, so is running an idea past other people and asking for feedback.

What is not fine is taking a lesson directly from elsewhere and delivering it without any tweaks. I have been involved in interviews where I recognised the lesson resources as having been taken directly from a facebook group with little adapting and I think it can reflect badly.

I once observed a lesson and when I asked about how they'd planned it, was given a very convincing story about it. Unfortunately, I had written the lesson and resources as part of a scheme which was then published. I'd have minded less if they'd been honest...

Maybe it’s a maths thing. Creativity is not a requirement to be a maths teacher. There are millions of free resources out there. There’s a severe shortage of maths teachers who can even deliver a lesson that someone else has planned.

It could be a maths thing. It's not my area though.

For me the issue isn't about creativity, it's whether a candidate is competent at planning a lesson. If a teacher can't be given a straightforward topic and plan an interview lesson in an age where there's a plethora of resources out there then I would doubt their competence. In my opinion no English teacher should be on Facebook saying they don't know where to start picking a book for a Year 7 interview lesson.

I'd never expect new staff to reinvent the wheel, and am a fan of having department resources, but it bothers me that we can't be that many years away from having Heads of Department who have gone through their training year teaching pre-planned lessons, done their NQT year delivering other people's centralised PowerPoint,and had a couple of years of having material handed to them. It makes me worry about a skill gap, especially for medium and long term planning.

In maths, the creation of a perfect powerpoint requires experience that a trainee doesn't have.

I don’t know if it’s different in secondary, but in primary I have no issue with people getting ideas from elsewhere. Expecting someone to come up with entirely fresh and creative for any of the 12+ subjects is batshit, in my opinion. What’s far more important is how the initial idea is adapted to suit the needs of the class, and how effectively it is delivered.

In English there's many ways to skin a cat. They'll start by closely following the department schemes, then we'd expect to see more adapting for the classes, and in discussion with their mentor they'd have the freedom to try their own ideas out as well.

When I see posts asking for people to hand interview lessons over on 'writing skills' or 'poetry' or people saying they have no idea which book might be appropriate for KS3, I get worried. When I've had situations where trainees haven't bothered to read the texts they're teaching, I think sometimes there's been too much expectation of everything handing across.

I agree with Lola and Noble! I definitely think that there are people recently qualified who have never really planned from scratch and think creating (or downloading) a snazzy-looking PP is as far as planning needs to go. However, interview lessons are so fake and not knowing the class and what they have really done, even if you are given some information, makes it very difficult to plan effectively. That's why I would be more interested in how they interact with the class and how they deal with the way the class reacts to the lesson than in knowing they had created everything from scratch.

We've tried to move away from PPs or at least keep them very simple because too many people seem to think 'I've found this great PP, that's it, I'm sorted....' without doing anything else.

To be honest, I don’t think it matters. What does matter though is if you’re pulling a lesson directly off Twinkl or Tes and making 0 changes to suit your teaching style. A lot of teaching is looking at lots of other lesson ideas and creating your own as i said to fit an individual style.

Why does it bother you so much? I’m sure you’ve been in a similar position where all you need is someone to bounce some ideas around. I reckon some people just want ideas. I’ve asked for ideas and advice before. NOT for anyone to say do a,b and c. But just things like advice from more skilled and experienced teachers. There’s no harm in that.

littlegreybird I agree with you. It doesn't have to be all singing, all dancing, highly original for an interview lesson. The candidate does need to choose appropriate materials and needs to be able to talk about their decisions.
In my opinion "I had no idea what books were appropriate for Year 8 so asked strangers on the Internet to give me a lesson" isn't good enough.

Watercress99
There is a substantial difference between:
A) "I'm planning an interview lesson and the topic is X. The school have given me 45 minutes. Would anyone be willing to give me some feedback on my lesson choices and advice for the day?"
And
B) "My school have given me an interview lesson on novel openings. Please can people tell me what novel to to and share their lessons with me".

The more I'm in English teaching, the more I'm coming to the conclusion that inability to suggest appropriate texts or basic lesson ideas is usually a red flag for poor subject knowledge. The nature of English means a teacher with poor subject knowledge is also likely to struggle to know the texts well enough to simplify key concepts for lower attaining students and those with SEN. They're also unlikely to have the subject knowledge required to appropriately stretch the most able.
When I've had to raise concerns about trainees, or have coached colleagues on Teaching and Learning, subject knowledge tends to come out as a glaring issue most of the time.

@LolaSmiles exactly, advice I have no problem with. But it's frustrating for me when I work really hard for every interview to see other people wanting basic ideas like an appropriate text or existing lesson plans.

Sure in the long term once you're on the job, you just can't plan every single lesson from scratch and you'll use and adapt other plans. But for an interview surely you should be capable of it

I am going to be a primary trainee in September and see a lot of "can anyone recommend a book to base a lesson on" and I don't like that as much because what's inspiring to one person won't be to another every time. (For example I really am not the biggest fan of The Day the Crayons Quit but it's usually mentioned a couple times every time someone asks this.)

Beachhuts90
In the context of a training year then a discussion about different books can be helpful. When I'm replanning elements of our curriculum, I'll regularly discuss ideas, ask if people can recommend texts that are similar to others, might be good for certain students, on a particular topic. It's a good conversation for teachers to have because it builds your subject knowledge. By having those conversations and good subject knowledge, those trainees/teachers are less likely to find themselves in a situation saying they want others to tell them what to do in an interview.

To be fair @LolaSmiles I did say the purpose is not to completely plagiarise. I also have a first in my degree and a masters and now near completion of my pgce. I personally know what I’m teaching and how to pitch to different levels as I’ve done a lot of in depth analysis of various texts during my university experience. So I think a lot of the issue is if someone can’t teach the text or poem they’ve chosen then there’s a problem.

Also, in interviews you don’t actually know the kids or have any rapport with them. So a lot of it comes down to doing your best and if people need some help along the way then as long as it’s not completely plagerised and they use those other lessons as a starting point to give them ideas it’s really not an issue.

If people wanted to gate keep resources tes wouldn’t exist in the first place. I’d happily help and give people ideas I genuinely think if it helps someone get a job I don’t have an issue. I’ve shared some of my stuff with the other English trainees on my course and vice versa.

It’s up to the individual. But I don’t see the issue.

@rainingcats agree with this approach 100%

I love the day the crayons quit. But I'm a secondary teacher so I love it for me, not for teaching.

@rainingcats

Asking for advice is fine, so is running an idea past other people and asking for feedback.

What is not fine is taking a lesson directly from elsewhere and delivering it without any tweaks. I have been involved in interviews where I recognised the lesson resources as having been taken directly from a facebook group with little adapting and I think it can reflect badly.

I observed an interview lesson a few years back and didn't know the lesson had been taken from TES and not tweaked. We then asked the candidate about WWW and EBI for their lesson and were impressed that he came up with the same points as us. We employed him and when he started in September I found out that he didn't know how to plan a lesson from scratch. He was brilliant as a teacher but just simply didn't know where to start. His first term was me teaching him how to. I then found out a few years later that he has been able to hear our thoughts on his observation on interview as we were discussing it with the head who hadn't observed with us which explains him knowing what to say. I wasn't aware that the door allowed sound to travel clearly. Thankfully he was an outstanding teacher and has excelled in his career but I can just imagine the opposite 😩

Watercress99
Believe it or not, I do know the interview process well.

I don't need someone who hasn't competed their training year to tell me about teaching resources and how interview lessons work.

Nobody has an issue with sharing resources. The OP has questioned people asking for others to tell them tasks for their interview lessons. For my subject I entirely agree with her. A candidate having a first or a masters doesn't change that in my view as completing a university essay is not the same as having appropriate subject knowledge to differentiate for a range of SEN, nor is it the same as having the subject knowledge to stretch more able students and structure learning appropriately.
For example, I could easily talk postgraduate level content with fellow postgraduates, but if I were to have no idea where to start selecting a Year 9 novel then my subject knowledge would be poor, and that is a problem.

But Lola, thinking that a 30 minute interview lesson is a good representation of how that teacher teaches normally is a bit optimistic to say the least.

Get them in the classroom to see if they can interact with the kids and assess whether they are getting what is being taught and adapt their approach (some of them really can't). Use the interview to talk to them about teaching.

Of course it's not their normal teaching Noble, but English interview lesson tasks are usually quite open ended and tend to come down to:

1. Pick a text that is suitable for the year you're teaching
2. Get them exploring a main idea in it through an activity of your choice

There will be the same sort of tasks in Year 7 as Year 12, and everything in between. The same sort of tasks also crop up in revision guides, on resource sites, in school schemes of work. If someone genuinely can't think of a text to do for a year group then it's a fairly big concern.

If they said "I'm doing Text A, and have Idea 1 and Idea 2. Which do you think would work best in 30 minutes?" that would be understandable. If they say what I've seen in some education groups ("I've got an interview on a novel / writing skills / poetry / descriptive writing. Can anyone tell me a text? Can anyone send me their lessons?") then they're potentially a liability for a department.

I didn't mean go sound harsh there Noble, but that's my experience of people who haven't a clue how to select an age appropriate text in 2021 when there's quite literally pages after pages of sources, list after list of book suggestions, and schools are full of schemes of works.

I always think "would I want my child taught by someone who can't name an appropriate book for an average 11 year old?" And the answer is no.

I think the main difference between English and maths, Lola, is that trainees don't need to ask for lesson ideas because it's all there already for free on TES/other websites.

So we don't assume that the lesson is something that the trainee has planned from scratch anyway.

Maybe the flaw in the interview process is assuming that they have.