What I Learned In My Interview : A Teacher As A Teacher

What does it mean to be a school teacher? Before mindlessly declaring my major in teaching, I have decided to ask a teacher them self about their experience. My mentor, Gina Biles, has taught sixth grade students at Clear Lake Intermediate School for more than fifteen years. The opportunity to mentor a college student sounded exciting to Ms. Biles, who has always loved motivating, inspiring, and educating the youth. Throughout the interview, her goal has been to portray the life of an educator and to stress the impact education has had on her life.

Ashlyn Edwards is an elementary school grades teacher and is licensed to teach grade levels K-6. She currently resides in Texas and has taken some time off from teaching to be with her family. Before taking the time off, Ashlyn worked in two different schools, one of which was in Georgia and the other in Kansas. In Georgia, she taught Kindergarten and in Kansas she taught grade 1. I chose to interview Ashlyn because I had met her several years ago through another friend and I found out she was a teacher at that time. Even though I had not got to know more about Ashlyn before this interview, I was hopeful that she would be able to provide me some insight into what it is like being a teacher and the ups and downs of the job. I asked Ashlyn five questions related to her job and she provided answers that not only guided me but also helped me to understand ways that I can become prepared to teach.

While attending South Elementary School in Marshall, Illinois, I have learned a lot about the daily life of working within a school from interviewing two different teachers. I have never realized how much work goes into being a teacher no matter the grade being taught. I am so glad that I got the opportunity to participate within this program and getting to talk to these teachers. It has made me realize even more that I have chosen the right career path for myself.

I decided to interview a friend of mine who just started her second year of teaching. She works for a Middle School in Westchester County, teaching 6th and 7th grade math. I asked her a series of questions about her whole experience on becoming a teacher. I was relieved to hear what her first few days were like being a new teacher, because that could be nerve racking for any new teacher. She explained to me that she was shocked on her first few days, and overwhelmed with the respect she immediately received from her students. They greet her in the hallway, and thank her as they leave class. I could just imagine how good that would feel to get that reaction from your students. When I asked her why she decided to teach the grade that she is in, she explained to me that she chose to do middle school because it is a crucial time for development in an adolescents life, and also a challenging time.

As a future teacher I was very intrigued that I was able to go into the classroom and do hands on activities with the students. I was able to do my field placement hours at an elementary school that provided numerous opportunities for me to work with kids and gave me a chance to broaden my horizon with some new ideas for teaching. Overall I was able to focus on motivational skills, diversity, testing, I got the chance to work with children with learning disabilities, I was able to see the way the teacher interacted with her students, and much more. Although it seemed like 20 hours was a lot, I enjoyed being able to be in a classroom and prepare myself as a future teacher.

I interviewed a childcare teacher engaged in the Early Childhood Development. She graduated from East Tennessee State University. She has been intrigued by children her entire life, she has volunteered with children with disabilities and worked with children since age 16. You can say that teaching has been a dream job of hers. Going through the interview I went through a series of questions as follows. What are positive and negative parts about being a teacher? What disciplinary styles work the best? And how can teaching in America be improved?

when i was growing up i never thought i would want to become a teacher. I always thought i would be something more exciting like a storm chaser, or a astronaut. a teacher back then to me was nothing special, it was just a boring job dealing with ungrateful children. Then when i entered high school I realized teaching students wasn’t as bad as i thought. I started tutoring kids in both math and history. i loved it when they would begin to understand a problem they were stuck on or they remembered that one date in history so they can pass a test. It was amazing.

For this assignment we had to interview a teacher. The teacher I chose was Mrs. Gilbert. She is a special education counselor and algebra teacher. She has been a huge influence on my life. I can not wait to share the things I have learned from her in this interview.

I interviewed Pam Heaten a teacher from Eugene Fields Elementary School. Mrs. Heaten has worked six years in the Gates Corporation. She has worked four years with PAT and seventeen years in the Poplar Bluff school district. Mrs. Heaten told me that she was always up for a challenge and her track record reflects that. She has worked a third-grade classroom, SPED classroom, IEP facilitator, fourth-grade classroom, and now as an intervention teacher.

Over the last several years I have been involved in the hiring process for teachers, assistant principals, and principals at my school therefore I am very aware of the difficult process of determining if a candidate has the necessary skill set and qualities to be a part of a school. In the article Improving Teacher Selection with Behavior-based Interviewing written by Mary C. Clement she discusses behavior based interviewing which has been adopted from the business world into the education world. Gone are the days of writing a seven-point lesson plan, now the focus is on how was that lesson taught and how did you as a teacher handle specific situations.

The relationship between my cooperating teacher (CT) and her ELL Kindergarten student from China (ML) appears to be a good one. I have only had the opportunity to observe their interactions for a total of two school days so far, but I do whole heartedly believe that she has her student’s best interest in mind, and that she will continue to employ proven ELL instruction methods for him and her other ELL students. My CT greets each student as he/she enters the classroom in the morning and this includes ML. Both times I have been in the classroom I have noticed that when ML comes in in the mornings, he has had pictures he has drawn for his teacher the night before. She happily accepts the picture from him and compliment something

As long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a performer. During my freshman year of high school, I knew that I needed to major in music in college. At first I thought that I would major in vocal performance, then it changed to musical theatre. It stayed as musical theatre for a while, then I became a teacher’s aide for my old high school choir director. I was able to help out more with the Varsity Choir and the 8th grade choir as well. My choir director gave me the opportunity to work with a few of the 8th graders on their competition music. This started my love of education and is what influenced me to make my major music education. Unfortunately, during my last semester of high school, my choir director

What does it mean when someone tell you they want to be a future teacher? Some may think you’re making a mistake; saying teachers don’t make a lot of money or have terrible benefits. Being a future teacher to me isn 't about the money or the benefits, it’s about the satisfaction of seeing a child learn something because of you. When someone tells you they want to be a future doctor it 's because they want to help people, that’s exactly what a teacher does---helps people. Teachers are the stepping stones to any career you want to do, without teachers who would you look towards for guidance on how to do anything in life. Being a teacher is my goal in life and I intend on being the best that I can.

My greatest contribution as an instructor has been the time I have spent off the podium. There are several subjects that I may not be familiar with or maybe seen as the tougher subjects or perhaps even boring. The time that is spent preparing outside of the classroom is extremely important. As an instructor first and foremost you have to spend countless hours researching a subject, analyze it, and anticipate questions. It is not a comfortable to be in front of students and not fully knowing the subject. Not only does the material have to make sense to you, you then have to take that material and think about how to explain it so that every different Soldier from every different background can make sense of it. Practicing teaching methods using different comparisons, developing training aids all takes a lot of time outside of the duty hours to deliver the best level of instruction possible. Then there is the time spent improving on the lesson plan. The lesson plans we receive are often times missing information, they order they are in doesn’t make sense and sometimes they are completely blank a give use nothing to go off of. That means dedicating the hours outside of the class room to improve or even completely build that lesson plan. Time must be spent to ensure that every piece of information the students need is included. This is not always possible we could easily spend an entire week breaking down the components of an automatic transmission and go into

From the time I was a seven years old till the current day, as a Sophomore at Benedictine University, I have wanted to become a teacher. The four years of high school, Oswego High School, I truly become passionate to become a teacher. I took the necessary general education classes, and my elective classes learning about child development and early childhood education. Once I graduated high school, I felt confident to become a teacher, but I discovered that special education was what I truly wanted to do. From the first day or first grade up to now, I have become a success student, which I can’t wait to become teacher I want to be an aspirational teacher one day to my future students.