This year, I applied to the Ministry of Education so that I could work as an elementary school teacher in the future. I don’t fancy my son being in the same school with me, but knowing that this would facilitate childcare arrangements made me decide to pursue this course of action.

I went for my interview yesterday. It was a good interview because it was different from all the interviews I had been to. The interview panel only asked two questions about me: Why have I stayed for ten years at my current school? and Why do I want to work at MOE?

The rest of the interview involved me being put on the hot seat and grilled about many kinds of questions related to teaching - Differentiated Instruction, how I might stretch the high-progress students, what do I know about recent curriculum n policy changes, comfort level facilitating classroom discussions like Hamas conflict n LGBT, use of the nation’s online management system, etc. All my effort preparing for left field interview questions was for nothing. For most interviews, I felt that the interviewers were trying to suss me out and determine if my personality would be a good fit for their organisation. But in this case, I felt that the interviewers didn’t seem concerned about getting to know me as an individual; they just needed to know that I could perform the job. Suffice it to say that I didn’t get the cosy vibes that might have been typical of some other interviews.

I answered the questions as best as I could. However, towards the end of the interview, the English expert commented that I might have spent too long in the vocational school, which could be observed from the colloquial register I adopted. Another interviewer, who is an ex-principal, took over him and explained that connecting is one thing but modelling good English enunciation is another - and should be my responsibility.

Now I feel like I screwed up my interview. My immediate response to the English expert was that I was feeling self-conscious about possibly giving off too many aizuchi (conversational fillers), which might have resulted in me using too much Singlish. In hindsight, I should have thanked him for his feedback and asked him to explain further what he meant by his comment. I really didn’t feel like I was being too casual and enunciating my words incorrectly. Okay, maybe my ending consonants were muffled because my mind was racing and I was rushing to formulate my thoughts into spoken sentences.

Anyway, I’m kinda reeling from the repercussions of this interview. I feel that I might just flunk the interview, which would hurt my ego slightly. More importantly, I will be bummed if the interview doesn’t work out because my wife will have to pick up the slack and send our kids to two different schools early in the morning. I will feel bad for her.

Anyway, I got to wait it out until I receive the interview results one month later. I just hope I don’t ruminate about it too much because what’s done is done.