Interview

It was not until I began pursuing a career in education when I realized how much of an impact certain teachers have had in my life. Throughout the course of my education I have been fortunate to learn from some excellent teachers. These teachers were the ones to go above and beyond to make their classroom a comfortable learning environment and second home for their students. These teachers were the ones who motivated me to give maximum effort on every single assignment.  These teachers were the ones that cheered me on when I was feeling discouraged and overwhelmed in some of my classes. These teachers were the ones who stayed after school with me to go over something I struggled with. These teachers even made dread worthy classes like algebra and geometry fun and enjoyable. For this assignment, I interviewed Ms. Susan Hodges from Dwight D. Eisenhower High School who embodies all of the characteristics of a great teacher. Ms. Hodges received her BS from Northern Illinois University, and went on to receive her Masters in Education from UIC. She has been a teacher in our special education program for over 15 years.

The first question I had to ask Hodges was how she deals with disruptive class behavior, and naturally I did not even get to ask that question because she was two steps ahead and looking at my interview questions before we started. She slipped me a behavior sheet she uses for each and every one of her classrooms. The behavior sheet is basically an excel spreadsheet with the names of all of her students going down the left hand column. Across the top of the sheet she has separate rows labeled,  “electronics out”, “talking out during class”, “out of seat”, “not working”, “earbuds”, and “tardy”. Ms. Hodges uses the spreadsheet to keep tallies when students demonstrate her designated unexpected classroom behaviors. Page 514 in our book addresses rules as "statements specifying expected and forbidden behaviors." Rules like these establish classroom guidelines. If a student gets more than five tallies in one of Hodges' class period, they will then receive a written referral. Hodges explained that in the beginning of the year she announces whenever she is giving a student a tally, but after a couple weeks into the school year, she does not announce student’s tallies. She just simply hands students a referral for reaching five tallies. On page 281 in our book, Woolfolk discusses the topic of reprimands. It states, “soft, calm, private reprimands are more effective than loud, public reprimands in decreasing disruptive behavior.” Hodges does a great job of keeping data on students disruptive behavior without further adding to the disruption by announcing their wrongdoings to the classroom. Her strategy is a good way of holding students accountable for their actions without humiliating them in front of the class. A simple documented behavior sheet is something I too would like to utilize in my own classroom. For me, I would like to learn and understand repetitive behaviors so I can figure out what needs to be done differently to prevent these behaviors from happening again.

Next, I asked Hodges what some of the biggest challenges in her classroom are, and her answer took me by surprise. She said that some of the biggest challenges have to do with inconsistency by administration. On page 286 our book talks about how it is important that both teachers and administrators agree on an approach for supporting positive behaviors and correcting problems. Research has also shown that school referrals have decreased when everyone is in agreement with positive behavior reinforcements. On page 399, Woolfolk gives the definition of cooperation as, “way of working with others to attain a shared goal.” Although the book was talking about cooperation between students, it is essential for both administration and teachers to cooperate and collaborate with each other to keep the classroom running as seamless as possible. Hodges went on to say that parent involvement, or lack thereof, is another constant challenge that hinders her students success. She states, “you do not know what baggage the kid is coming with” she has learned to question the reasons why a student might always be late, or why a student might be acting out today when they were fine yesterday. Hodges said it was important to analyze all the different contributing contributing factors that are adding to your students performance. Understanding you students and their backgrounds will in turn help you establish a great relationship with them. Like Hodges, it is my goal as a teacher to make my classroom a safe space. The book states on page 512, "all students should feel safe in the classroom. Beyond that, they also should experience respect and caring. When students feel caring and support from their teachers and their peers, they are more likely to cooperate with classroom activities." To ensure maximum student success, my classroom will be a judgement free zone, where students are free to be themselves and comfortable enough to ask for help when they need it. 

The last question I asked Hodges was how she builds her classroom community. She replied that working with the kids every day helps them build strong relationships. Ms. Hodges also assigns a lot of group work for her students. These group assignments help students share their ideas with each other and also allows them to gain insight on viewpoints that may be different from their own. Like a domino effect, The more students work together, the more students will get to know each other, and the more comfortable they will feel sharing their ideas and feedback with each other. The book also has the same stance as Hodges when it comes to group work, only the book refers to group work as cooperative learning. On page 399 it states, “cooperative learning is when students work together for one class period to several weeks, to achieve shared learning goals and complete jointly specific tasks and assignments.” There states that there are five different elements that coincide with cooperative learning such as, positive interdependence or the belief that all members can attain their goals, promotive interaction or encouragement from other group members, individual accountability known as one’s own contribution, demonstrating collaborative and social skills by listening and giving each other feedback, and lastly, group processing or the monitoring or group progress. These cooperative learning skills are not developed through one group project, these skills that are learned through group activities over time. Cooperative learning takes a lot of trial and error. It is the teacher’s job to facilitate cooperative learning activities to make sure students are collaborating and cooperating correctly. When I get a classroom of my own I would like to include all of the cooperative learning assignments in my lesson plans that I possibly can. Like Hodges said, I believe it teaches students skills like how to socialize, how to listen to one another respectfully, and how to challenge any of their own preconceived assumptions and ideas that they might have. Cooperative learning is a valuable life skill students will use in their daily lives well beyond my classroom.

Throughout this interview I learned that Ms. Hodges is exactly the type of teacher I hope to become one day. To say I am lucky to work with Hodges everyday would be a complete understatement. She is such a valuable asset to our special education program administration even asked her to delay her retirement another two years to stay with the program. I have learned so much from Ms. Hodges already, and I am so thankful I will have another two years to continue learning from her. I admire her classroom management techniques and teaching styles, and most importantly, I admire the love and admiration she has for all of her students. She has such high expectations for her students, and motivates them to work as hard as they can. This interview allowed me to gain more insight on Hodges’ classroom management techniques that I plan on bringing to a classroom of my own one day.

https://youtu.be/fEjCFtekZjU