What subject do you teach?
I teach English and Film.
What is your favorite lesson to teach?
The Monster unit is my favorite lesson to teach.
When did you decide you wanted to be a teacher?
When I was an undergrad at Humboldt State University, I helped the professor with some students, and I ended up having a good experience that made me want to continue working with students.
What is your favorite memory from the time you’ve been teaching?
My favorite memory from the time I’ve been teaching has to be, it sounds dumb, but the essays that my 8th graders wrote this year, this past semester because it was the best writing I was able to help them with. It felt like they learned something. I learned a lot about taking a step back and seeing what my kids knew. Then learning from that to make the lessons better to get them to where I felt they could get, and the majority of them reached their potential or surpassed it which I feel made my job better, and made me feel better.
What were some challenges you faced?
Challenges I’ve faced throughout my teaching career include never knowing if what I taught stuck in their heads you never know until you give an assessment, but you want to know at the moment sometimes when you do a lesson you feel like you did well, and then you talk to the kids and they’re like, “I have no idea what we’re doing.” You then just think you don’t know how to teach, so it messes with you, so I guess one of the biggest challenges is never knowing exactly what the students are thinking because sometimes, you students don’t always talk to us, so we would give you tests and stuff. I do stress about it because then I go home and reassess my whole life, and try to figure out why I decided to be a teacher.
What advice would you give to students who plan on becoming a teacher?
Make sure you have dealt with your triggers. Make sure you know what your goal is in terms of why you became a teacher because I think if you don’t identify your triggers when you are being dealt with a situation where you are triggered, sometimes your unhealed self comes out and you get taken back to a time where you weren’t the best. I think knowing the reason why you wanted to become a teacher is very important because, on those hard days, you remind yourself why you decided to do this.
What subject do you teach?
I teach physical education
What is your favorite lesson to teach?
Field hockey is one of my favorite lessons to teach
When did you decide you wanted to be a teacher?
After I had an injury playing soccer so instead of playing soccer I decided to go into teaching.
What is your favorite memory from the time you’ve been teaching?
One of the biggest ones is going to my previous school and seeing my high school students graduate I was their middle school teacher and saw how happy and excited they were to see me because of the impact I feel I had in their life
What were some challenges you faced?
Some of the challenges I faced were definitely during the COVID years because we had to go online. I think one of the toughest challenges was to work with some students who are quite difficult to work with but it is part of the job and we just signed up for it. It is something I cherish.
What advice would you give to students who plan on becoming a teacher?
If you want to be a teacher you are doing it more to help others. If you like helping people that means you are likely to have fun and you are there to help somebody if you are not there to help people you probably aren’t having fun.
