Running Head: TEACHER INTERVIEW REFLECTION PAPER
Teacher Interview Reflection Paper
Julie Carroll
Ivy Tech Community College - Central Indiana
1. Tell me about yourself as a teacher.
a. Why did you decide to enter teaching?
i. She was young and idealistic. She liked kids and wanted to help them.
b. How many years have you been teaching?
i. 20 years
c. What grade levels have you taught?
i. 3rd, 4th, 1st and Kindergarten
2. Tell me about your classroom and teaching strategies.
a. How is your classroom arranged to optimize learning?
i. Mostly whole group activity with areas for small groups and technology
used to engage the students
b. What are your strategies for effective classroom management?
i. Establish routines, expectations, consistency and schedules and assign jobs
to the students
c. What types of lesson plans do you create? How do you incorporate state standards
into your curriculum?
i. Create all lesson plans. Utilize curriculum mapping and pacing guide to
incorporate standards
3. For you what are the most exciting aspects of teaching and your work?
a. Seeing students grow academically
4. Who has given you the most support in learning to be an effective teacher?
a. Other teachers
5. How do you encourage involvement of parents and families in the school and your
classroom?
a. Parents are involved through the daily folder, the weekly newsletter, weekly
report and the parent center
6. How much time do you spend outside of the work day on preparation and grading?
a. Average of 2.5 hours a day, more on the weekend
7. What do you think are the most difficult challenges for teachers?
a. Discipline
8. What do you see as the pros and cons of ISTEP? In what ways, if any, has ISTEP
affected your teaching
a. Not applicable to first grade, but it drives curriculum with HOT topics (High
Order Thinking)
9. What types of subjects do you most like teaching?
a. Math
10. If you weren’t teaching what would you like to study?
a. Cognitive or brain development
11. What is the hardest thing to see your students go through?
a. Emotional distress
12. How do you continue your professional development? What is required to maintain your
teaching license?
a. She has a life license but most people have to take 6 credit hours every 5 years
13. How do you know you are successful?
a. If the students are showing they are learning what she is teaching
14. What advice would you give to a future teacher?
a. Be in good health and have lots of energy.
From my interview with Mrs. Mary Danks from IPS Elementary School #58 1 learned a
lot about the teaching profession and what it takes to be a teacher. From what she said to me in
the interview I have learned much about what a teacher truly is. A teacher is someone with a
very special quality and understanding of his/her students and can connect with them to help
them become better learners (Koch p. 20). I have learned not only what it is to be a teacher but
what it takes to be effective in the teaching profession. From my interview I have learned that an
effective teacher maintains an organized, disciplined and well scheduled classroom in order to
create the structure that most young children need in order to learn the best.
Mrs. Danks was very open about the amount of energy it takes for a teacher to maintain
the structure children need in the classroom. I fmd Mrs. Danks to be very energetic, empathetic
and organized which are all characteristics that I identify well with. My opinions about the way
to organize lessons and lesson plans to optimize learning differ from hers. She prefers large
group work and whole group activity to small groups; whereas I have seen small groups and
stations work just as well with less discipline problems than usually happen in large groups of
people. Mrs. Danks emphasized the importance of parent involvement in outside of school
activities and homework. In the beginning of the year, she sent home boxes for her first graders
of words they need to know from Kindergarten and other reading practice resources that students
need to be successful in first grade. I would like to emulate her idea of active parent involvement
in the furore because I feel that, without parent support, teachers cannot succeed.
I learned much about teaching when I interviewed Mrs. Danks that reinforced my beliefs
about teaching as a profession. Most of the students in IPS #58 are considered at risk which
means they are "in danger of not completing school or not acquiring the education the need to be
successful citizens" (Koch p. 236). Many of these students are from very poor families and, in
fact, the whole school receives free lunch because so many of the students in this school qualify
for free and reduced price lunch. I learned that Mrs. Danks is a lover of learning, as most
teachers are, who loves watching her students grow academically and hates to see her students go
through the hard things that comes with working in an inner city public school where students
come from very broken homes.
From what Mrs. Danks has indicated this love of learning and desire to help students with
the "hard stuff’’ is a relatively standard mentality in the teaching profession and that excites me
because I can’t wait to dive in and start helping children learn and grow through everything that
the world throws at them. Based on what Mrs. Danks has said I am much more excited to be
teaching students in first.grade than I was before. I love the idea of working with young children
and Mrs. Danks’ obvious love of what she is teaching makes me want to work with first graders
even more than I did before this project.
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REFERENCES
Koch, J. (2009). So You Want to Be a Teacher?. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company