TEACHER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

1. How long have you worked at this school, and has this been your only teaching assignment? (A) 10yrs, yes this has been her only assignment 2. What is the demographic make-up of your class? Performance level? A) The class is 100 percent African American and 95 percent of the class receive free reduced lunch and the performance level ranges from medium to low in the classroom. 3. Why did you choose the teaching profession? A) She believes teaching is a calling for her and been naturally teaching since middle school 4. What is your philosophy of education? A) Constructivism and children learn through social interaction when provided the proper resources they will learn, and they have to been exposed to quality material 5. Where did you receive your degrees? A) Received bachelors from South Carolina State in elementary education and masters in reading from Winthrop university national certification in ELA 6. Tell me about your teaching experiences? What schools? How many years? What grade level and what subjects? A) She has taught at Brookdale Elementary School for 10 yrs. 9 years teaching 3rd grade English/and this is her 1st year teaching 5th grade English 7. Do you feel that your courses/student teaching preparation prepared you adequately for your own classroom? Please explain your answer. A) not all the way wanted more content specific training and thats why got your masters before she taught in the content area 8. How do you teach to meet the diverse needs of your students? A) Beginning of the year she assess students through reading assessments and give reading inventory for themselves and have one on one conversions / whole group one on one instruction and re teach and present in a different way communication with parents 9. What would you recommend for a beginner teacher who will be teaching a language arts class for the first time? A) Would recommend know his or her philology of how kids learn best and seek out mentor teachers who have the same philology of education and find a content area that he/she is interested in particularly, know what u believe and get additional degrees in that content area

10. What challenges do you have when teaching the language arts to your students? A) Time/ small amount of time to teach literacy 11. What are some of the teaching strategies that you use in your classroom that have been effective for meeting the needs of your students? A) As a reading teacher she teaches comprehension strategies such as predicting, inferring, previewing text, questioning, visualizing. Graphic organizers 12. Which do you find to be more successful with assessing your students? teacher made or commercially made assessments. Please explain. A) Teacher made because you know what you teaching and you know what your students need, and expose the children to commercially made assessments for the end of the year test 13. Explain how you integrate technology to enhance your teaching of the language arts? A) She uses smart board a lot, taught children how to create power point and presentations and use projector and laptops to create projects and desk top computers 14. What challenges do you have when teaching students to write? A) she has had to make sure she gets quality time with each student as a writer, has one on one time and students cannot publish anything without having conference with the teacher first. 15. If you had it to do over again, would you choose teaching as a profession? Why or Why not? A) She would do the same thing over again without missing a beat. Because this is her passion and true calling in the world.