Kristen Rasmussen's Interview with a Third Grade Teacher

The teacher I chose to interview has been teaching for 16 years at the same school. The school she works at serves a military community. With it being on a military base, it is naturally diverse demographically, with students coming and going on a consistent basis to and from many different places in the world. The teacher has 4 English language learners in her class. She is a third grade. We eat lunch together every Tuesday and Thursday in the teacher's lounge where I get to sit in and participate in discussion about what is going on in each class.

We discussed how she came to be teacher and what inspired her to do so, what particular teaching approaches and styles she likes/dislikes using, her thoughts about the current curriculum and how she sometimes modifies it to better suit her students and how she looks back on her career as a teacher as she nears retirement either at the end of this year or next.

When the interview began, she immediately mentioned how teaching as a profession runs in her family. Her family members are her inspiration for wanting to help make our world a better place through touching the lives of children in a positive way, educating them about what the world could be like and how they as young people are the future and can make a difference. Her students have also always been her inspiration, to her there is nothing better than seeing that light switch on in a child's mind when they have learned something new. 

As we started to discuss how she approaches her class when teaching a new lesson and what styles she favors, she immediately said that it changes every year according to her new students' strengths and weaknesses. When she went to school to become a teacher, she was mostly educated on direct instruction and therefore that is what she used the most of in her early years of teaching. She emphasized how important it is to continue educating herself and new approaches and styles that fit her students.

Her class this year works particularly well in groups so she tends to find herself grouping the students regularly and encourages authentic discussion in class. She said she finds that students are taking more away from lessons when they learn about them hand-in-hand with their peers through sharing and discussion.

As far as the curriculum goes, she really likes the current literacy/language arts textbooks and manipulatives as opposed to the math. She is partial to the reading texts because they provide plenty of anthologies about things that truly interest her students: stories about outdoor activities, the beach and ocean, sports, etc. She said the math texts are not sequential and it makes it difficult for her to transition from one topic to the next; she has to jump around in the texts to help the students make more sense of it. She modifies lessons for her English language learners by consistently calling upon them to discuss a story or to solve math problems in front of the class to help them use their academic language skills instead of just their writing skills.

As we came to a close on the interview, she began to reflect upon her years as an elementary school teacher and how she has had her ups and downs, sideways and backwards about pretty much everything. But overall she could not be happier with her choice of profession. To her, there is nothing more rewarding than the graciousness of a student who truly learned from her and appreciates her as a teacher and human being. She is planning on retiring very soon as her and her husband look to move out of state. It was my pleasure to sit and discuss teaching with this exemplary person and teacher.