Erin - TP 8

Jung and I just finished teaching our culture class about job interviews, and I definitely think it was a success! We didn't have too many students show up...there were four Arabic-speaking men...but they participated very well and told us that they really appreciated our class.
They definitely threw us for a loop because of their ages and previous job experiences; they were already very knowledgeable about what we were planning to teach. So, instead of modeling an obviously bad interview and contrasting it with an obviously good interview, we thought this might be almost insultingly simple for them, so we asked one of them, Hassan, to model an interview instead and had the others give him positive and constructive feedback afterward. When we asked for examples of questions that employers might ask, they offered plenty, which we wrote on the board; they seemed very familiar with this, so we didn't have to give any of our own examples.
When we asked them to write 3 or 4 questions of their own, they all did this fairly easily, except for one student, but his classmates helped to give him suggestions. We broke them up into two pairs and had them sit at two different tables. At each table, the pair sat facing each other and took turns interviewing each other with the questions they had written. We asked them to take notes, which they did, and we each took notes on one of the pairs. When the allotted interview time was over, Jung and I reconvened the class and asked each student to critique their partner, which everyone seemed comfortable doing. Everyone gave useful feedback on responses, attitude, confidence, etc. and also shared what questions they asked their partner. Jung and I also offered constructive feedback for the pair that each of us observed, and they seemed grateful for this. After we gave a few more tips, such as how to greet, how to dress, and follow-up, we had an interesting discussion with the students about how interviews generally work in their home countries; this included everything from bureaucracy to not being able to shake a woman's hand. Although slight aspects such as this were different, they confirmed that what employers expect in an interview is generally the same in each of their countries....so not only was our class helpful if they want a future with an American company, but helped make them more confident for a job interview anywhere, with any company.
We finished by pointing them in the direction of some other resources, such as handouts from the Career Center and the Career Center's website. We also told them of how the Career Center will help with resumes, cover letters, and even practice interviews, all for free. They were very excited about this, and thanked us a lot for our class. So although I felt at first like we would have nothing to teach them, and we had to be a little flexible with our lesson plan, I still felt like they learned something from us, and I know that I definitely learned something as well.