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A Look at Two Different Teachers I interviewed two professionals for my paper, one being a Guidance Counselor and the other being a second grade teacher. I have found the two teachers to be somewhat different in the way they think and react to different situations. The differences in the years of experience, and the reasons for taking the job were greatly different. Of the two professionals, the primary teacher had a career before becoming a teacher, his career before this one was a jeweler. He liked this job but it did not give him what he wanted, and he was a little jealous of his wife’s career and security. The primary teacher has been a teacher for four years, and feels sometimes it gets better with time, but he has been though many grades of teaching, he has gone from grade three to grade two and than to grade four. He told me that with all the changing of grades he could not come up with lesson plans that he can say this worked well or to eliminate the lessons if it did not teach the children. He has to teach to the children according to the AP. When asked about having a choice of what grade you want to teach he told me, “You can put in a preference choice of which grade you want but you do not always get what you want.” The techniques used are more or less given to you by the school as a guide for you to teach accordingly, programs for different courses are given to you and you must follow them. Classroom techniques is something you need to develop, like starting the class with vocabulary words on the board, knowing this starts the class, when the children see this they know class has begun, but he best techniques to use is to be loving and funny. As for taking suggestions from other teachers, he says yes, without a doubt because without input from a teacher with more experience you may not learn the different techniques used to teach and keep young minds involved. Keeping teaching exciting and fulfilling he told me being such a new teacher is a problem because you want to bond with the children but too much is being forced on you to comply with, there is no bonding because you are told to keep up with the grade. Changing the teaching strategies, for him was hard because he did not always teach the same grade. Has your philosophy changed since college, yes it has, a great deal, he went on to explain. College is book learning, how can you figure out your own philosophy when you are told and influenced by many others, that tell you what to think and what you should do. Your philosophy comes from being there, with hands on and it is always changing. Getting the parents involved is sometimes complicated, we send home letters and we can talk to the parents when they come to pick up their children.
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