TEACHER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

GENERAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION 1. How long have you worked at this school, and has this been your only teaching assignment? If not, tell me about your other teaching experiences. What schools? How many years? What grade level and what subjects? A: This is my ninth year working at Marshall Elementary School. I worked at Dover Elementary School for six years and one year in at Fairfax Elementary. I have taught second to six grade and all of the subject areas in my sixteen years of teaching.

2. Why did you choose the teaching profession? A: I have always wanted to become a teacher. I use teach my doll babies as a child. I have always loved learning and wanted to share that with others. 3. What is your philosophy of education? A: I believe that all children have the ability to learn. I want to help students to develop a deep love and respect for themselves, others, and education. I want share my passion for learning with my students and have it become their passion as well.

TEACHER PREPARATION 4. Do you feel that your courses/student teaching preparation prepared you adequately for your own classroom? Please explain your answer. A: My college courses helped prepare with the academic knowledge, but it didnt teach me how to teach my students. My student teaching prepared me some, but there was so much more I needed when I entered into my first teaching assignment. 5. What would you recommend for a beginning teacher that might help me not to see lesson planning as a chore? A: Lesson planning will only not seem like a chore if the administration allows it to be true lesson planning. If the lesson plan form is ridiculously long and demanded in an unreasonable time frame, then it is going to seem like a chore. CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT 6. Describe your strategies that comprise your classroom management system? A: My classroom management is very simple. Tell students the expectations from the beginning. Set reasonable rules and consequences. Say what you mean and mean what you say. In other words do not tell a student anything that you dont intend to follow through with or that you cannot really do. If students find a weakness in your plan they will use it. Review the rules and expectations frequently. When students are doing the right thing, praise them and explain what rule you are praising them for. INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES 7. What advice would you give me, as a beginning teacher, that would help me to adjust to having my own classroom and students that would help me to be an effective teacher? A: Dont try to be the SUPER teacher. Understand that you cannot reach every student and thats okay. As long as you do the very best that you can, you have done your job. Please remember that

growth is growth. If a student leaves you better than they came then you have made a difference. You cannot correct everything in one year. Do not play favorites. Be firm when necessary, gentle when need, and humorous as often as possible. 8. Please summarize the Teaching and Learning Framework that drives the instruction in your classroom. A: Instruction in my classroom is driven by the states academic standards and the data that I receive from teacher observations, district benchmarks, and common assessments. ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION 9. Explain how you use your students assessment results to inform your instruction. A: I look at the standards that are most commonly not mastered by the students on the assessments. Those are the standards that I reteach first and to the whole group. For students who still dont get it or have not mastered a standard that is mastered by a large number of other students, I work with the standard in small group sessions when possible. If small group is not possible I use other tools like Study Island to help reinforce the skill. REFLECTIONS 10. What has been your biggest challenge this year with meeting the needs of your students? A: My biggest challenge is finding enough time to actually teach and reteach with all of the interruptions and assessments that we are being made to give the students. There are many times that I feel like I spend more time testing than I do teaching. My students are frustrated and so am I. 11. If you had it to do over again, would you choose teaching as a profession? Why or Why not? A: I would still do teaching. There are times when I question whether this is the profession for me, but that just comes from many of the frustrations that I have from the district and school level. At the end of the day, I am still very much a teacher. I dont know what I am going to do when it is time to retire, because I love to teach. I just wish I could teach more often. There are so many programs being pushed down our throats, but if they would just let us teach our babies they would show amazing growth.