Hired - My Ideal Teaching Job
Thank you Shakespeare. Thank you H.D.
Today I was hired by a high school, an ideal school, after teaching Act IV of Romeo and Juliet before a class of 35 ninth-grade students and a hiring panel of seven different English teachers and administrators. They actually pulled me out of the class, half-way through the lesson, to inform me that they were so incredibly impressed by my passion for the subject and the way I effectively handled the class that they wanted to hire me immediately. And this was a lesson I had less than a few hours to prepare for. Thank gods it was Shakespeare. My formal interview was yesterday afternoon, and while I won over the chair of the English department by responding to the question "What's your favorite poem?" with a dramatic reading from memory of the "If beauty could be done to death" stanza from H.D.'s "The Tribute" (she gasped audibly and exclaimed that I'd made a new convert to H.D.'s poetry)- the rest of the hiring committee was skeptical about my lack of hands-on classroom experience. So they asked me to come in this morning and teach R&J Act IV. I stormed to the local library before it closed and found the perfect CD - a BBC radio version of the play directed by Kenneth Branagh with the voices of John Gielgud, Judi Dench, and Ian Holm, among others. I found and printed out copies of a late 18th-century engraving dramatically portraying the rather difficult scene five. I brought in a "dagger" and a "vial" as props to help act out Juliet's important soliloquy in scene three. I managed to get the students to correctly identify instances of personification, dramatic irony, foreshadowing, and several other literary devices. Best of all, I kept the students *interested* in the play, and the entire class cheered aloud and clapped when the head of the English department announced that I'd been hired. The entire committee, including the principal, said they'd never seen a newbie teach a class so well, let alone Shakespeare, with so little advance warning.
And while I initially assumed that I'd be given the classes no one else wants to teach (the horrors of ninth grade remedial English), I've been hired to teach upper-level Honors/Advanced Placement English and to *pioneer* the curriculum for a new interdisciplinary class in the gifted program on the connections between literature and art history. They'd also like me to revive a lapsed elective course on opera and literature. I start teaching this fall, which gives me the whole summer to complete the (paid) orientation program and write lesson plans. I lack the words to describe my excitement, my enthusiasm, and my sheer joy right now. I finally feel validated about my potential to become a successful educator. Thank you Shakespeare. Thank you H.D.
Today I was hired by a high school, an ideal school, after teaching Act IV of Romeo and Juliet before a class of 35 ninth-grade students and a hiring panel of seven different English teachers and administrators. They actually pulled me out of the class, half-way through the lesson, to inform me that they were so incredibly impressed by my passion for the subject and the way I effectively handled the class that they wanted to hire me immediately. And this was a lesson I had less than a few hours to prepare for. Thank gods it was Shakespeare. My formal interview was yesterday afternoon, and while I won over the chair of the English department by responding to the question "What's your favorite poem?" with a dramatic reading from memory of the "If beauty could be done to death" stanza from H.D.'s "The Tribute" (she gasped audibly and exclaimed that I'd made a new convert to H.D.'s poetry)- the rest of the hiring committee was skeptical about my lack of hands-on classroom experience. So they asked me to come in this morning and teach R&J Act IV. I stormed to the local library before it closed and found the perfect CD - a BBC radio version of the play directed by Kenneth Branagh with the voices of John Gielgud, Judi Dench, and Ian Holm, among others. I found and printed out copies of a late 18th-century engraving dramatically portraying the rather difficult scene five. I brought in a "dagger" and a "vial" as props to help act out Juliet's important soliloquy in scene three. I managed to get the students to correctly identify instances of personification, dramatic irony, foreshadowing, and several other literary devices. Best of all, I kept the students *interested* in the play, and the entire class cheered aloud and clapped when the head of the English department announced that I'd been hired. The entire committee, including the principal, said they'd never seen a newbie teach a class so well, let alone Shakespeare, with so little advance warning.
And while I initially assumed that I'd be given the classes no one else wants to teach (the horrors of ninth grade remedial English), I've been hired to teach upper-level Honors/Advanced Placement English and to *pioneer* the curriculum for a new interdisciplinary class in the gifted program on the connections between literature and art history. They'd also like me to revive a lapsed elective course on opera and literature. I start teaching this fall, which gives me the whole summer to complete the (paid) orientation program and write lesson plans. I lack the words to describe my excitement, my enthusiasm, and my sheer joy right now. I finally feel validated about my potential to become a successful educator. Thank you Shakespeare. Thank you H.D.