Teacher Interview
My interview was with my husband. We met while in college getting our elementary degrees. After graduation I moved to Colorado while he taught 3rd grade at a local school. It was not long and he was knocking on my door. After marriage and moving to Colorado he spent a year substituting to get the “feel” for education in Colorado. He soon acquired a position teaching 5th grade at an intermediate school in a bedroom community to Fort Collins. He stayed there for 10 years until my corporate position moved us back to Topeka, where he picked up a position again teaching 5th grade at a neighboring 4A school. After one year there, he was offered a position teaching 7th grade language arts in the same district. He jumped at the chance and has not looked back. This was, “one of the best career decisions’ I’ve made,” he says.
His feelings about technology are “challenged” to say the least. While working on an automobile is not intimidating, computers are in his opinion. Therefore he sees his position as a general classroom teacher as one that is to afford students the opportunity to use technology they have learned in computer classes on class projects, but on a day to day basis he does not use it to teach. “I leave the computer stuff to the teachers that know about it, and they leave the nouns and verbs to me,” he says.
He is not opposed to using technology in the classroom. For one thing, all state and district assessments are done on school provided lap tops, and he has to access the internet to get those results. As for teaching on a daily basis, he just received a light box mounted to the ceiling that is connected to his PC on his desk. He says that has provided some new opportunities to teach paperless and to present some materials like creating power points or brain storming notes with students that he can save, unlike a chalk board. He comments though that he does not trust the internet, even though the school district has policing software. There is also the big issue of time. While the new technology is fun for him and the students and becoming more useful, it takes time to learn the software and time to create new lessons, something that is a great commodity in a teacher’s busy schedule.
Training is an area that his current district could step up. While emails and notes from the administrations are always popping up, he says that he learned most of his skills in Colorado which provided college credit hours for time spent at in-services learning new technology. Again he say that the time to plan, grade, communicate with parents by phone or email is always a priority. He would like to incorporate digital photography into his classes and is looking forward to a new web page program that his district is looking at, if they provide the time to learn and develop it.”
