My Experience: Teaching Group Interview for ESL

The exact words some of the other applicants may be using to ask this question in a few days time.

Today I had a group interview for the role of an ESL Teacher in an ESL Centre at one of the Uni's in Sydney. Before this I had never done a group interview so was a little perplexed as to what it actually was. I read a few things online and there were a two main types I saw described:

1. The Panel Interview - This sounds like there a few people from the organisation interviewing solely you or  group of candidates.
2. The Group candidate interview - In which you are asked to work with other candidates on tasks and perhaps present a demo lesson. This is what my interview was.

So you must be dying to know what we did?

Well let me start out by saying it went for 2.5 hours! But time flies when you're having fun and to be honest the whole process was pretty enjoyable despite the few butterflies I had! 

To begin with we all had 2 minutes to introduce ourselves. Surprisingly, out of the 9 of us only 2 were native English speakers. All the non-natives had ridiculously impressive credentials like Masters and post graduate studies in TESOL and a lot of experience teaching ESL. However, I was shocked by how many errors they made in English. One girl even wrote Tuseday on the board. Really. So although I was much younger and less experienced than the other applicants at least I could speak English. I also just think its weird to try and teach the native language of a country when you can't speak it properly. Sorry! I would never go to Spain and try and teach Spanish. How embarrassing for starters. And when my student enter the big wide world and make mistakes - who will they blame? Me. And rightly so. Buuuut that's not going to happen so we needn't worry!

Anyway here's the rest of the interview structure....

First task - Discuss in groups your strategies for dealing with 4 situations that could arise in the classroom. From memory they were:

• How you would deal with a disruptive student.
• How you would deal with co-teaching with a teacher who was not implementing technology to the expectations of the students and teaching plan.
• How you would deal with a student who complained about their host family/ had issues with their host family.
• I can't remember the last one! So it must have been boring haha

Second task - The dreaded DEMO LESSON!!!!! I actually felt really confident doing this. Mostly because the lady that went first was so bad. So that was nice for me. In all honesty out of all the demo lessons only 1 or 2 were OK. I suspect people didn't really plan for this or anticipate it. So if you are going to a group interview for a teaching position I would prepare at least 3 demo lessons that fulfil the following criteria:

• They can be adapted to different time frames eg you could leave some parts out if you have 5 instead of 10 minutes
• They are not boring grammar explanations that are trying to show off how much grammar you know. This results in a lot of teacher talk and doesn't showcase that you know how to include a range of things in each lessons such as group work.
• Don't try an adapt an entire lesson into a demo lesson. This is just stupid. So many people did that today and their demo lessons sucked and made them look stupid. Pick something short and sweet in which the students learn something and create something.
• GOOGLE IT! Watch some YouTube videos even from different subject areas to get ideas. The point of the demo lesson isn't to show off your knowledge of the English grammar system. Or that you can explain how to write some really complicated text type. It is not a time to show off! Rather showcase your overall skills as a teacher and presence. 

So my main tip: SHOWCASE don't SHOWOFF. You will just look stupid if you do.

And that was all. I thought it would be more of a learning experience for me but it wasn't really. Although the other teachers had a lot of experience I wasn't very impressed with them. The majority couldn't speak English and the only other native was an old man who was quite dull. Which brings me to another point, don' be over the top for the sake of getting noticed. One girl today did this and she just came across as plain cray cray.

I know this post is a little more informal but I hope it helps people out. Please post any questions or advice about your experience doing group interviews as well. We can all help each other become better teachers by sharing information!