Stacie Canepa's Interview with first grade teacher

I interviewed my master teacher, Mrs. R. The school that she works at is a local elementary school in a first grade classroom. This school is located in a rather poor section of the neighborhood and the student body is composed of a majority of minority and migrant students. Nearly 81% of the students are Hispanic and 8% of the population is African American. Almost all of students receive free or reduced lunch and this is the schools eighth year as a "program improvement" school because of floundering test scores. This is my master teacher’s 30th year teaching, but this is her first year teaching at this school.

Mrs. R always knew that she wanted to be a teacher. She grew up in a large family in a rural valley town near Yosemite. She remembers spending lots of time playing school with her siblings and practicing being a teacher. Mrs. R’s father was an educator and her mom was also very well educated but stayed home to raise her and her siblings. Education was highly valued in her family and the completion of a college degree was expected of her. It was in this environment that Mrs. R’s love of teaching and learning started to grow.

After completing her bachelors degree, Mrs. R went on to attain a special education credential along with a masters. During her first few years of teaching Mrs. R also decided to get her multiple subjects credential. The first 16 years of Mrs. R’s teaching career were spent in a special education classroom where she instructed students with mild to moderate learning disabilities. The past fourteen years of her career have been spent in teaching the first and second grade at another local elementary school. Mrs. R took one year off to be an academic coach for teachers throughout the district and found that she missed the classroom more than she had anticipated, which led her coming back to the classroom at our current site.

Through my discussion with Mrs. R I was able to learn many things about her beliefs of public education, her personal teaching strategies and how she remains so enthused about her job after all of these years. One of the first topics that we discussed was the place of public education. Mrs. R is a firm believer that all children should receive a free education and that every child regardless of race, income, or disabilities should have equal access to a quality education. One of Mrs. R’s main theories on education is that all children can learn. She believes that some children may need more time, repetition or a different teaching strategy to understand a concept but she believes that every child can learn. One of the things that she has found to be true in her classroom is that the nurture of each child by their family has a lot to do with their success in the classroom. The amount of time and involvement that parents invest in their children and their child’s education has a lot to do with the amount of attention that each student will need. Mrs. R does not underestimate the influence of a child’s home and family life on their ability to do well in school.

Having the opportunity to spend one day in Mrs. R’s class would give you a good idea of her belief in routines, rituals and procedures in the classroom. Each day is structured much the same way and the children know exactly what to expect from her and each other. The procedures that she has in place allow for the children to work independently and to know what to do in a situation even if she is not around. She feels that the predictability of her classroom routines makes the children more comfortable and allows them to learn more because they waste less time trying to figure out what is next or how to go about a task.

During our interview, Mrs. R also divulged what has kept her in the teaching profession so long. A self professed, life long learner, Mrs. R feels that this is the only job where she can come to work everyday and expect to be challenged. It seems that her students are always teaching her something about education and the learning process which keeps her on her toes. One of her favorite aspects of teaching is seeing the progress in her students. She loves to see the “light bulb go on” for her students and loves to take part in the process of making “things click” for them. Overall I feel very lucky to have had the chance to talk with Mrs. R about her philosophies on teaching and learning and to learn about what has kept her so passionate about teaching over her thirty year career.