Teacher Interview

Teacher Interview

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Ashley Eigner. Ashley is a middle school teacher at Clarendon Hills middle school and also my fiancee’s sister. Ashley is a special education teacher that regularly co-teaches and she also specializes in English. I chose Ashley as my interviewee for two reasons. The first main reason is because she was one of the people who inspired me to pursue my interest in teaching. The other reason that I chose Ashley is because she had a very flexible schedule, something that someone like myself having a very busy schedule needed in order to be able to actually interview someone. We went over six main questions that my team of fellow students picked out which we believe would help us best understand the teaching practices that our interviewees use and also how they manage their classrooms. This blog post is going to be specifically broken down into those six questions as a way to best organize the information that I received from Ashley.

1.   What are your classroom rules? How do you make your students familiar with the rules? 

Being in a Special Education classroom, Ashley has to be lenient with some behaviors and strict with others. Her rules mainly flow along the theme of respect. Ashley said that she informs students of the rules she has for her classroom at the start of the school year and reminds them of those rules verbally and also visually with the use of posters and memes hung up on the walls of the classroom throughout the school year. The students in her classroom are expected to respect her and her fellow co-teachers, and when she doesn’t receive the respect she is looking for, she confronts whichever student is the cause of the issue.

2.   How do you manage your time to get all your teaching duties done within schedule? 

For the ten years that I have known Ashley, she has only ever been late to a gathering a couple of times. Because of this reason, it did not surprise me when she stated that she uses electronics as constant reminders in her classroom. She likes to employ the use of timers and alarms for both her students and herself throughout the day. This can be for anything from setting a timer for a test students are taking or a timer for herself to know when her plan period is about to be over. Using a stopwatch in the classroom is a good way to be efficient with classroom management (Woolfolk pg. 511). 

3.   What is your teaching philosophy when it comes to disciplinary action? 

As mentioned in question one, Ashley has to be pretty lenient on some student actions.  Because Ashley is in a Special Education classroom she usually has to explain why a student's actions are wrong, and then verbally tell students what they should be doing or physically model the correct actions the student should be doing. Students in her classroom are allowed three “screw-ups” a week, and after getting a fourth, the students will receive a detention. If the problem consists past one detention, Ashley will meet with her team on how she can best work with the student to correct their actions. That being said, Ashley would much rather use discipline to develop her students self control than remove those students from her classroom, which should be the main goal of discipline (Woolfolk pg. 513)

4.   How can you get students to be excited about learning? 

Ashley is a big believer in giving her students choices throughout the class hour. Because she specializes in English, Ashley believes that students should be able to write and read about whatever they are interested in. This way a student will actually be engaged in what they are reading or writing about. Another choice that students have in Ashley’s class is the teacher that they work with during the class hour. Some of her students can be slightly temperamental and won’t work with certain teachers if they have had negative experiences with one of the co-teachers throughout the week.  

5. What are your behavior boundaries in class? Do you allow talking or kids on cell phones, tardies, or late assignments, etc.? How do you handle classroom disruptions? 

Ashley's school official policy on cell phones is that they should be powered off and out of site. Ashley bends this rule from time to time when students are working on quiet, solo work by letting her students listen to music on their phones as long as the students are being respectful to the teachers and other students in the classroom. Being allowed to bend the school's rules slightly is a reinforcement for Ashley’s students to respect the people around them (Woolfolk pg. 267). Tardies are only addressed in her classroom if it becomes a recurring theme with a single student. Late assignments are handled the same way as tardies, but Ashely lets her students know that they should email her about not being able to do homework the day before it is supposed to be turned in. Disruptions in Ashley’s classroom are handled on a per event basis due to the nature of a Special Education classroom. 

6. How do you incorporate the guidelines set by the administration into your classroom management style?

The administration in Ashley’s school has a hands-off approach for teachers that are following common core standards and can prove their teaching is effective for their students. One rule that administration put into place that makes her slightly distraught is a ban on any type of food in the school's classrooms. This is unfortunate for her because she used to have a candy bucket that students could get candy from if they participated in class. Because this rule is put into place for safety reasons, Ashley follows this rule very adamantly, yet reluctantly. Using rewards like candy to get students to answer questions in class is an example of operant conditioning (Woolfolk pg.266).