>> Hi. My name's Rebecca and I am a high school Spanish teacher.
Q: Can you describe in detail what your duties are on a daily basis?
>> Sure. When I get to school in the morning, I set up my lesson plans for the day.
I do a weekly lesson plan at the beginning of the week
where according to state standards and daily lesson plan objectives,
I plan out for the week what my students will be doing,
so then each day when I get to school in the morning,
I prepare all the lesson activities, putting together worksheets,
finding activities out of the textbook, preparing and creating different speaking and listening activities,
and making copies and getting everything together for the day's lesson.
I typically in a day I teach five classes at varying levels of Spanish
and throughout the day I'm giving students notes for reading out of the text.
Students are participating in pair activities and oral activities
and all the while I'm on my feet and addressing the lessons, leading lessons,
and then in-between classes I'm responsible for taking role and grading papers
and assigning different grades to projects and helping out with students after school for tutoring
and other issues that they might be having outside of the classroom and on a one-on-one individual basis.
Q: What do you love about your career?
>> I love working with the kids.
They keep me energized. They keep me on my toes.
Definitely working with the next generation is a really unique opportunity
and I just love every day is a new day.
I never know what the day is going to hold
and I might have a really great day one day and a really crappy day the next,
but it's never the same and I usually go from
one day that might be really crappy to the next day being really great
and that's just a really great thing that nothing's the same
and just that the kids are really lively and energetic and they spread that energy onto me.
Q: What are some of the challenges that you face in your job?
>> Definitely just, I mean not only I love working with the kids,
that's I would say the positive aspect, but the downfall is also working with kids.
I mean my business is working with children and working with people
and you never know how that's going to go, so that's just definitely a challenge.
Trying to reach every child at the level that he or she is at
and trying to teach them on their level and getting them to learn
and I teach in the inner city, so just reaching kids according to not only their needs,
but just a lot of personal issues.
There are a lot of things that the kids bring into the classrooms with them
and I have to be aware of that and I have to be sensitive to that
and so I just have to get to know my kids and knowing them is a challenge,
but it's the most rewarding challenge that I could imagine.
Q: What does it take to be successful in your career?
>> A lot of caring, a lot of compassion, and a lot of hard work.
I never could have imagined how much work teaching was,
because the great teachers always make it seem so flawless,
but really there's just so much going on behind the scenes
and just every day, every single one of my students, all 125 of them,
are a unique situation and I have to, every single day,
be aware of each one of them in order to be successful.
Q: Is there any kind of personality type that you would recommend for a career like yours?
>> Definitely someone that is hardworking, someone that's ambitious,
someone that's creative, and someone that wants to make a difference.
Q: Anything a college kid can do to prepare themselves for a career like yours?
>> I would say studying education, but more so,
I think just being really passionate about the field that you want to teach in.
it's really important for me teaching Spanish to be really passionate about my subject area,
so just having a background knowledge of Spanish and the culture is really helpful.
I would also say, if you're really interested in education,
just getting the opportunity to look at as many different classrooms, observe classrooms,
just connect with old teachers, connect with different types of high schools,
inner city, rural, public, private,
and just getting a real sense of what it means to be a teacher in any kind of setting,
because no matter what kind of school you're going to teach in,
you're going to encounter kids that are all different types of personalities
and all different types of backgrounds and challenges
and so being able to have that experience of seeing that first hand will be really valuable.
Q: What are your hours like in the office versus out of the office?
Do you work from home a lot?
>> Well, I do work from home as far as grading papers goes.
My hours, the one thing, my life is run by a bell, that is the one downfall, but I have really great hours.
I get to school every day at about 7:30 and I can leave at about 3:30.
Typically I stay longer, because at the end of the day
I find that that's my best time to be productive,
because I can sit in my classroom and just relax without having
any kind of distractions from the kids or other faculty members
and I do put in a lot of hours on my own grading and preparing lessons,
but definitely that's a personal choice.
So, I think that teaching is a really great schedule for somebody that has a family
or somebody that wants to be involved with other things,
because the hours can be great and of course I have the summers off, so that's definitely a huge plus.
Q: Any final advice you can give to kids who would like to enter a field like yours?
>> Just to be really passionate about it, because when you're a teacher, your passion,
your energy completely reflects on the kids and that ultimately as, you know,
anybody that works in the business field, they're working with a product,
well as a teacher, our product is the next generation.