If you’re fortunate enough to have scored a job interview at a two-year college, congratulations. Now it’s time to start preparing for what is arguably the most important, probably the most arduous, and certainly the most daunting (judging from the e-mail messages I receive) part of the interview: the teaching demonstration.
Over the course of my 30 years’ teaching at community colleges, I’ve observed dozens of teaching demos. Only a few were actually good. Most were just OK, and many were downright awful. I’ve seen a number of otherwise-solid candidates derailed by their demonstrations, and many other people whom we hired despite a lackluster performance, hoping against hope that it was an aberration.
Those candidates were not bad teachers. OK, some of them were, but in most cases, the problem was not that they didn’t know how to teach but rather that they didn’t know how to conduct a teaching demonstration during a job interview. The two things, while obviously related, aren’t exactly the same.
Here, then, are some tips to remember as you prepare your teaching demo.
It’s a demonstration, not a presentation. One of the biggest mistakes job candidates make is treating the teaching demo like a conference talk, sometimes even complete with PowerPoint slides and handouts of those same slides.
It’s not that using technology is a bad idea (more on that later); it’s just that candidates who are using it in that particular way are demonstrating the wrong thing. They’re showing the committee how well they can present information to peers in a conference setting, not how well they can teach students in a college classroom.
The problem with the presentation approach is that candidates spend all their time talking about what they would do in such-and-such a class rather than actually doing it. That deprives committee members of the opportunity to observe the way candidates present real material in a real-time, quasi-classroom setting. And that’s what we need to see in order to hire the best teachers.
Choose a manageable topic. While some search committees allow candidates to choose a subject for their demonstration, most panels provide the topic. In fact, committees often give all of the candidates the same topic in an attempt to place everyone on an equal footing.
If you don’t get to pick your topic, you still have some important choices to make: Exactly what information, and how much, do you hope to convey in the time allotted (usually 15 to 20 minutes)? How will you present it? Will you mostly lecture? Invite some discussion? Involve everyone in a group activity? Dazzle committee members with your technological brilliance?
The first step is to narrow your topic to something you can manage in your few minutes on stage. Here again, one of the biggest mistakes that candidates make is covering too much information — basically, trying to squeeze a 50-minute lecture into a 15-minute presentation. Once again, they end up talking about what they do instead of doing it.
My advice is to identify a 15to 20-minute segment of a familiar lesson, an excerpt that can stand on its own without a lot of background or lead-in material. Preferably, it should be something you’ve taught often enough that you already know how you’re going to present it.
Treat committee members like students. Sometimes a search committee will give you this directive explicitly, either in written preinterview instructions or verbally as you’re about to begin. But whether they mention it or not, remember that you can’t teach without students — and committee members are the only other people in the room. (It’s true that a few colleges have job candidates teach actual students in a classroom setting, while committee members observe. But in most hiring situations at two-year colleges, it’s the committee members themselves you’ll be “teaching.”)
Treating committee members as if they were students means forgetting, for a few minutes, that they hold your professional future in their hands and relating to them as you would to students in a classroom. Address them just as you would address students. Ask them questions, try to engage them in discussion, and call on them to answer. Involve them in activities, whether they, much like real students, appear willing or not.
Although that approach may seem to involve a great deal of role-playing on your part — and perhaps on the part of committee members as well — it actually provides them with invaluable insight into your teaching style, your classroom manner, and your ability to establish a rapport with an audience.
Just be careful not to appear condescending. If you do, committee members will wonder if you will treat a bunch of 18to 20-year-olds the same way, or worse. And don’t take the “student/teacher” relationship too far, like the candidate who confiscated a committee member’s cellphone during “class.”
Do more than lecture. Tempting as it might be to stand up and talk for 15 minutes, don’t. And for heaven’s sake, don’t simply read from lecture notes; that’s a surefire way to eliminate yourself from contention.
At the very least, mix in a little discussion and some question and answer. (One nice thing about having faculty members as your “students": They’re going to know the answers.) And be sure to distribute at least one handout that clearly enhances the lesson.
You might also use a group activity, although I would add three caveats: First, make sure the activity is, shall we say, age-appropriate. Don’t be like the candidate who gave each of us on the search committee a cracker, asked us to stare at it for three minutes, and then instructed us to write a paragraph about what we saw. I confess: I just saw a cracker.
Second, don’t use an activity that will take up too much of your time. We want you to do more than just lecture, but we do want to hear you lecture. So choose an activity that can be completed in no more than five to seven minutes.
Finally, don’t expect committee members to be any more enthusiastic about participating in your activity than your actual students would be.
Use bells and whistles — in moderation. After you are invited to an interview that includes a teaching demonstration, one of the first things you should find out is what kind of technology will be available to you. If it’s something you’re comfortable using — that is, something you already use regularly — plan to use it in your teaching demo. So, for example, if you normally use PowerPoint in your classroom, or like to pull up YouTube videos on the Internet, the committee would probably love to see you do it.
On the other hand, you shouldn’t go to great lengths to concoct some “totally wired” lesson plan that doesn’t reflect the way you actually teach, just to show how savvy you are. Your lack of comfort (and perhaps familiarity) with the technology will almost certainly be evident.
Also, even if you’re a bona fide geek, avoid giving a teaching demo that is so technologically based that it’s almost a lesson on technology rather than on the topic at hand. Remember, search committees at community colleges are looking for the best teachers, not necessarily the best techies. By all means, dazzle them with technology, but do more than just dazzle. Teach.
And bear in mind that if you do intend to use technology, it’s vital to have a backup plan. In my experience, nothing is more common during teaching demonstrations than for the classroom technology to malfunction. So if you’re using a CD, have the data on a flash drive as well. Prepare handouts that you can substitute for the images that won’t appear on the screen if the projector refuses to boot up. (Here’s where those copies of your PowerPoint slides might come in handy.) If all else fails, be prepared to teach in the old-fashioned way.
By following those few simple steps, you can set yourself apart from other candidates. And if you’re interviewing at my institution, where I’m once again serving on a search committee, I’m not just suggesting you follow my advice — I’m begging.
After all, how many awful teaching demos can one person sit through?
