133: Tell me about a situation that frustrated you
during student teaching
A: I was frustrated when my college supervisor
made me write out my lesson plans for the first ten weeks of student
teaching. Many of my friends only had to
write complete lesson plans for the first four weeks and then they went to
“block plans.” However, in talking with
my supervisor I learned that it is always advisable to over-plan – that is,
write lesson plans that are more detailed and more involved early in the
teaching process. I discovered the
advantage of that on two occasions – once when an assembly had to be cancelled
and another when a teacher on our social studies team called in sick at the
last minute. I sure was glad to have
those extended and expanded lessons – they really came in handy. I understand now why I was asked to do a lot
of over-planning early in my student teaching experience.
This question is designed to probe how you react to
criticism. Are you someone who blames
everyone else when things don’t go right?
Or, are you someone who takes advice and uses it in a positive way to
become a better teacher? This is a grand
opportunity for you to show how you turned a negative into a positive.
