The Beginning...

It has been many months since I last posted and much has happened worth mentioning. After jumping through many bureaucratic hoops at the beginning of the summer, I was able to apply for the job of my dreams. Many of you have heard me herald the innovative school in West Philadelphia as one of the most exciting things happening within secondary education. Yes, I am once again talking about the School of the Future, only this time, I am not talking to you as a fan-boy outsider but as a dedicated full time educator whose efforts to get hired at this school did not prove to be in vain.

There is so much I would like to share about this place, in this posting but would fill pages upon pages (the proverbial page obviously) with everything that is going through my head. For this reason, I will keep this posting brief and only concentrate on informing you about the path I have been on these past few months.

As I said before, after certain expeditions through jungles of red tape I was finally able to apply to the School of the Future (or as we call it in house, SOTF). The application was interesting. It took a number hours for me to complete because it essentially asked you to construct a project to be used within the curriculum. As I am currently building the actual curriculum, I now understand the purpose of that exercise; you cannot effectively teach at this school if you can only think in terms of your area of certification. That is, if you can only think of teaching math in the traditional way without being able to connect each topic to a real world problem and also not being able to connect it easily to other subject areas then SOTF is not a good fit.

I was eventually called in for an interview which I had heard was very different from typical interviews. There was three different parts of the interview. It started with a typical Q and A with a group of people (Educators, Learners and Parents) asking me an inordinate number of questions, some of which had 5 parts to them. This took about two hours to complete. I actually have no memory of what I said. I think I was on auto pilot after about an hour. The second part was a group interview where you work with other candidates on a certain task. You were given instructions to complete this task, some of which were missing and others were wrong. I cannot speak about the task I participated in because of a nondisclosure form I signed. What was bizarre about this was that I was the only candidate that day and was asked to complete the task as if I was working within a group. It was weird. The final part which I think was somewhat impromptu, was a face to face interview with the principle (chief learner). We spoke for another hour and a half about the interview, the school and any questions I had. I must have done well because I was offer a position on the spot.

I was hired in July and started work on August 1. After training, professional development, new learner orientation, chaos and curriculum development, it is now time for the second year of the School of the Future to begin. Are we ready? I'm not. All that I can say is, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more."