Decorah Teacher Class Inteview

This Monday evening our Educational Psychology class interviewed three teachers from Decorah from different fields. One was the high school voice teacher, the other was a 5th grade Math teacher, and the last was a special education teacher. As usual, different questions were asked concerning their teaching experiences. The first question was "what surprised you about teaching?" Some points made by all three of them were that it takes a lot of energy, it requires patience and willingness to change, and at times your great "ideas" can get squashed. I imagined that that would be true for a beginning teacher that they would have so much energy and a bunch of ideas that sometimes may be turned down. Working with colleagues was also mentioned and they all agreed that it is important for teachers to have good relationships with them not only to have a social life at school, but because if you don't like a particular faculty member, the kids pick up on it. I definitely agree, because I know that I had some teachers that didn't get along with other faculty members and let the class know, and I find that being very unprofessional, not to mention something that could get a teacher into trouble. As with the other class interviews the No Child Left Behind Act was brought up. Many similar things were mentioned, but I found it interesting that Jason (the choir teacher) had to incorporate sight-singing into his curriculum to help kids on standardized tests. I think it's nice to know that as a choir teacher I will be able to help in some part of helping students achieve high standardized test scores. Some other points that they made that stuck with me was that it is very important to be willing to contact or communicate with parents. Also Jason mentioned a saying that Weston Noble had said, "You have to be a life long learner." I agree that teachers need to keep updated and not be afraid to change or be wrong in some situations. Nothing is worse than a teacher who isn't updated, hasn't ever changed his/her curriculum, and will never admit that anything they do is wrong. Overall I thought this class interview gave me a lot of insight of what the first few years of teaching is like, how you develop as a teacher, and how to deal with all of the situations that are thrown at you as a teacher.