Crappy demo lesson experiences are not just a Chinese phenomenon. I was asked to perform a History demo lesson once at Southend-on-Sea, England for a college of further education back in the late 90s. There were a whole bunch of other hopefuls too; some just like me who had just graduated from teacher training college. I gave my demo lesson, which went rather well as you would expect from a newly qualified teacher. In fact, because I had to return to that college some time later, one of the panelists, an Administrative Assistant (no students), told me that she was so excited about my lesson that she went home and started to go through her history books again. It turned out that a young, somewhat immature girl, who was not trained in History, who already had a job at the college, had been tipped-the-wink that the job was hers. The interviews were just for appearance sake.

If that wasn’t’ enough, I still attended another demo interview at the same college (glutton for punishment), and the guy who was supposed to observe didn’t even lift his head to look at me and was dismissive when I handed him the handout I had prepared. He was writing something, but I’m guessing it had nothing to do with what I was doing. I didn’t get that job either and since have become rather skeptical of demo lessons.