>> My name is Katie Strauss [phonetic].
I am a high school teacher at William Penn High School.
I teach Spanish I and II and I love my job.
I teach basically all day.
There are some days where I get a 90 minute break
where I can plan, make copies, that kind of stuff.
But I do teach the whole day, 7:36 to 2:25 every day.
Well I usually get to school around 6 every morning
to just get myself mentally prepared, set up, organized.
Spend all day teaching, grading, planning.
Usually go home and do a little bit more work too but it's all kind of part of it.
Part of the job.
I knew what I was getting myself into [inaudible].
Definitely [inaudible] grading.
You know [inaudible] teacher.
Well I do -- I usually leave school around 4-4:30.
I try to get to the gym and then I usually spend another hour maybe at home.
In the beginning, it was a lot more.
It was like 2 hours.
I wasn't going to the gym.
I was just working straight through just because I was trying to get my head wrapped
around everything but now it's just usually an hour --
maybe an hour and a half tops which is better.
I get to bed early, like 9.
[silence] I guess I just love having my own classroom and feeling
like I'm teaching maybe a little bit of Spanish, even if it's not the best Spanish
and it's not the best writing but at least at the end of the day that they are -
especially Spanish I - that they are learning something.
And they're getting a lot out of it.
And I think it's important for them to see someone who went to college, who stayed there,
went through, did the whole thing and got a job.
And it's really important for high-schoolers to see that happening too.
Hardest part is probably the amount of time that goes into it.
It's just -- it's a long day.
It's a lot of effort and sometimes it's not always -- benefits the right --
it doesn't always go the way it's planned or it's supposed to go which can be frustrating,
but it's you know kind of part of the territory.
But I work with some great people and I've learned a lot
but the hardest thing is definitely the amount of time that goes into it.
The amount of work.
[silence] Well if they're not -- if they're already in the program at their school
to be a secondary teacher, then you can always go like that.
You know it's a lot of taking the practice exams, getting you know background checks,
there's a lot of different parts to it but it's worth it.
And usually whoever is at your school - teachers,
career services - will help you get to that point.
Get to where you need to be.
But a lot of it just comes with the territory.
As you get going, you start seeing things that really didn't work
out the first time and you change things.
And they're already a lot of things that I did in the first month
that I would never, ever do again.
Things that I didn't even learn at school.
I just learned from observations, from my students, from the way things went
from their reactions to it and kind of going from there.
So a lot of it is just learning unfortunately as you go and learning from your mistakes.
[silence] I went to the University of Delaware and I loved it.
I went for -- I actually went for 5 years.
I went originally for elementary education but ended up switching
over to Spanish because I love Spanish.
I studied abroad through the university and I just ended up falling in love with the teachers,
the program, everything I kind of got out of it, the people I met.
It was awesome.
Well, I student taught at William Penn where I work now.
And they ended up having an offering
as I was finishing student teaching and I applied and I got the job.
I was going to look in Massachusetts because that's -- I'm kind of from that area.
And this kind of just worked out better because I was used to the school,
that's where I did my student teaching, I already knew the teachers,
the way it was set up, some of the kids.
And it's where I am now.
[silence] I would say definitely do it.
It's worth -- but just don't base your decision on the first week because the first year
of teaching is the hardest but it gets better.
And it's the best job in the whole world.
I love it.