CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE STUDENT-TEACHER INTERVIEW

This is a Choose Your Own Adventure parent-student interview. You will be actively participating by
choosing how the story continues. As you read through our scenario, you will be given multiple choices
as to how you would like to react. Your choices will have consequences. If you choose “wrong”, you will
be led to a dead end and have to return to the beginning. Best of luck, adventurers!

START

It is a rainy, bleak November. It’s your first year of teaching, and this evening marks your first
ever foray into student-teacher interviews. You are teaching two blocks of your primary teachable, and
one block of Healthy Living 9. You are nervous about the upcoming student-teacher interviews, but
you’ve prepared obsessively and gotten good guidance from your favorite co-worker, Mr. T, a seasoned
math teacher.
Your first interview is with one of your Healthy Living students: Marley Briggs. Marley is
failing this course. She rarely shows up to class. When she does, she puts her head on her desk or sullenly
reads French literature. She is smart, and very capable, but quite unmotivated.
Presently, she walks in the door and sits down in front of you, dropping her backpack at her feet.
She crosses her arms and looks at you expectantly. She seems to be a in a bad mood. “So? What do you
have to say about me?”

CHOICE 1

OPTION 1A) Greet Marley in a friendly way and genuine way. Ask her how she’s doing, and what she’s
been up to lately.

OPTION 1B) Get right into it. She doesn’t appreciate mindless chatter. Tell her she’s failing.

 Go to next page to read your choice!

OPTION 1A)

“How have you been, Marley?” you ask.

She shrugs. “Okay, I guess.”
You prompt her a little more, asking her how her other classes are and what she’s currently
reading. Marley visibly relaxes and tells you how she’s reading a novel called Chercher le vent because
she wants to get connected with her Quebecois roots. This leads into a discussion of how she has top
marks in her French class and is considering taking Spanish next year, and potentially Mi’kmaq too. She
has had thoughts about being a translator.
When you try to steer the conversation to her performance in Healthy Living 9 this term, she
interrupts to tell you a funny story about her math class.

CHOICE 2

OPTION 2A) Gently let her know that you need to move on and discuss this class, as you only have ten
minutes. You’d love to hear her story another time, though.

OPTION 2B) Let her tell her story.

 Go to next page to see your option.

OPTION 1B)

You get right into it. You let Marley know that she’s failing and are very direct with her. Halfway
through your small speech about how badly she’s failing Healthy Living 9, you begin to feel that you’ve
made a mistake. Marley seems detached, uninterested. She stares at her fingernails. She doesn’t make eye
contact. After you finish speaking, she simply stands up, grabs her backpack and walks out.

Sorry, you’ve failed! Return to the start and try again.

OPTION 2A)

“This sounds really funny,” you tell Marley. “But we’re crunched for time here. Can you tell me
the story before class tomorrow?”
“Fine,” Marley says, disappointed.
You tell her why she’s failing Healthy Living 9: she rarely attends class and hands in assignments
that don’t even remotely follow the given instructions. Recently, instead of handing in the required one-
week healthy eating plan, she handed in a rather intense poem about how Monsanto is an evil corporation
that will slowly poison American consumers. Although you appreciated the depth and insight of Marley’s
poem, you were forced to give her a very low grade for ignoring the instructions.
Marley tells you that she found the assignment boring and unchallenging. She eats very healthily
as her mother is a vegetarian chef. “It felt like an assignment for fifth-graders,” she says. “It didn’t make
me think at all.”

CHOICE 3

OPTION 3A) Defend your assignment. Show Marley the GCO’s and SCO’s of the Healthy Living 9
curriculum document. Explain its relevance in extreme detail.

OPTION 3B) Ask Marley how she likes to learn. Ask her to give examples of an assignment that does
make her think and write them down. Make a mental note to think about Marley’s requirements next time
you design an assignment.

OPTION 2B)

You sit back patiently and wait for Marley to finish her story. She becomes more and more
animated in the retelling, and it seems impossible to interrupt her. When you try to stop her from talking,
she says, “I’m almost done, just wait!”
You eye the clock on the wall behind her. When Marley finally concludes her story, you open
your mouth to start talking about her grades. There’s a knock at the door. The next student has already
arrived. You’re out of time.

You failed. Return to the start!

Issues:

 Connecting with students to communicate that they are failing

 Ensure that you can connect with the student to find value in the assignments. The student is
clearly not motivated through grades.
 Perhaps, alter the assignments to find a way to motivate the student to engage with the learning
that matches the learning targets.