Teach for America interview questions

I was contacted months before the interview by Teach For America and they showed interest in my resume and application. They set me up for a phone interview. The phone interview was fast and felt very rushed. I passed the phone interview and received an email letting me know I had moved to the 'Final Interview'. I had to submit my Identification and a copy of my social security card and my college transcripts. I selected the regions I wanted to work in. On the day of the Final Interview I was 10 minutes late. The building was downtown Dallas and we were told parking would be $18.00. I decided to take the Dart bus and the Dart Bus went straight past me. I had to run back to my car and drive downtown. It was heavy traffic and I had to wait to pay in a pay to park lot. I walked in 10 minutes late and knew that was a very bad thing. I almost decided not to come but I came anyway. The process started off with the lesson plans. Then we had a group discussion over a question we were asked by our interviewers. The question was 'A school council has two options to try and meet budget problems with the local school district. They can close schools and transfer all the students to better performing schools or leave the school open and lay off a few teachers." We had to discuss the pros and cons of both approaches and describe why we decided on what we decided on. We went to lunch and came back and were given our Final Interview times. I felt good about the process. I wasn't very nervous. Finally it was time for my final interview. We interviewed with only one person. I was asked basic questions about why I chose Teach for America and why did I want to be a teacher. Then the interviewer suddenly started focusing very, very intently on my previous job history. The other candidates were mostly right out of school or already working in the teaching field. I had been in Corporate America. The interviewer wanted to know why I had left my previous two companies (one company filed Ch. 7 Bankruptcy and the other laid off hundreds of workers and I was caught up in one of the layoffs). The way the interviewer was phrasing the questions made it seem she felt like or thought I was defective somehow because my company went bankrupt and I suffered a layoff. It's hard to describe but the line of questioning about 'why' I left my jobs and if I had ever 'quit' a job unexpectedly made me feel uncomfortable. It would have been better if I had 'no job experience' like others in the room. She could not ask these questions of them. I would also answer a question and she would come back and ask the same question again. I would answer a second time and she would ask it again. I honestly don't know what she was looking for. I have always interviewed very well and have 99% of the time been offered the position when I interview but I didn't have a good feeling about this interview. She also asked me a strange question of "how did you feel coming into the interview late"? Umm... I felt like crap but of course I couldn't say that and all I could do was explain the bus went straight past me. He didn't even stop. So I had to suddenly run to my car to drive the distance. After the interview was over I was told I would 'hear something'. I didn't have a positive feeling behind the interview. Just a side note. Teach for America had on a bulletin board pics of all their previous hires and I saw no one over 25 years old. They had about 50 people hired out of the Dallas office and three were black and everyone else was white. They all appeared very light skinned as well. I didn't notice this but another interviewer did. They all appeared to have a certain 'look'. I didn't feel very good about this because that would mean I would more than likely be one of the only, if not the very very few, hires who was significantly over 21-25. I was also troubled by the fact so few of their new hires were black. Only three out of around 50 people? I'm not sure why this is but I could tell by the profile of those they usually hired I would more than likely not be hired. I was right. However, there are many opportunities to be a teacher. Teach for America is not the only avenue. There are several others. Many which are local. For those of you who do not get the opportunity to work through Teach for America, please do not give up. Kobe Bryant was traded at one point in his career and even Oprah Winfrey was told she didn't fit the 'standard' of what a talk show host should look like (and she was fired) early on in her career. Teach for America has their 'profile' of who THEY THINK would make a good teacher (someone very young and right out of school with limited work history, usually white (going by the vast majority of the people they hire) and that's fine. But don't let their standard define YOU. YOU define yourself.

Very lengthy. A long application, followed by (for some people) a phone interview, then a requirement to complete a number of other steps, like finding three recommenders, submitting a ton of paperwork, etc. I was really disappointed by my final interview - everything went decently well until the one-on-one interview. I didn't feel my interviewer liked me at all, and I felt that it was for virtually no reason. She hardly smiled and pegged me with question after question - I had little to no space to breathe or contemplate answers. She furiously typed the entire time I spoke, which made the whole thing feel very cold and impersonal. After the interview was over she was curt and unencouraging, which just made me all the more confident that I wouldn't be offered a position. I did feel that I screwed up my 5-minute teaching lesson, but beyond that, I felt that I was a very strong candidate for a position. Plus, we were told that the whole process is incredibly holistic and that we "didn't need to worry" about the 5-minute lesson. Well, I'd have really appreciated some more feedback about what exactly made me unfit for a position, because I hardly feel my performance during the 5-minute sample teach indicates my readiness to serve children. Funnily enough, I have experience on my resume that involves working with children, and even children from low-income or disadvantaged homes, yet I wasn't asked about this experience in any way. Rather, very minute, specific deails about one particular experience I had were zoned in on to the point of exhaustion. Really don't understand the process, and wish every candidate was treated with equal optimism, respect, and courtesy.