As sophomores, the next few years of our lives will be the years of planning as we have to decide on a good college and, hopefully, our career choice. So, we wanted to interview adults in our lives to understand how to go about that process. We decided to interview four teachers at the high school, Ms. Jones, Mrs.Scott, Mr. Herrick, and Ms.Huller-White. From these interviews, we also learned how they made their own big life decisions and how they continue to have fun in their careers.
S: Student
T: Teacher
MRS. SCOTT
We then interviewed Mrs.Scott. From an early start, Mrs. Scott knew what she wanted to with the rest of her life. And for some people, it’s easy to find their calling. Mrs. Scott chose to be an English teacher, but not a traditional one. Using creative writing prompts and different activities, she keeps students interested and attentive.
S: So, Mrs.Scott, why did you get into this profession.
T: Well, when I was in high school I had the opportunity to train to be an ESL teacher and I went through all the training and I ended up becoming a tutor for a girl who was actually older than me. She was from Mexico and she was here for one year to improve her English so she could work in her father’s business. I realized that, the more creative the work that I did with her was, the more engaged and able to have fun she was when learning. So, that was the start.
S: What is your favorite teaching memory?
T: *sighs* Oh boy. That’s a tough one. One that comes to mind is one summer I worked at a theatre program in Brookline and I worked with a class of third graders. We were doing this activity where they created their own characters from the outside in. Some of them created brand new characters, but this one boy, he created a character that was based on his grandfather. This little, second or third grade boy just came alive as his grandfather named Mortimer and he was just so into it. He was a little quirky, he didn’t really have a lot of friends at the program, but this gave him confidence so that was inspiring.
S: What’s your funniest teaching memory?
T: So, I also taught kindergarten for one year and this little boy in my class would propose to me, pretty much every week. And every time I would say, “Ummm, I won’t marry you, G——.”
S: Wait, did you work in Gloucester?
T: No, this was in Pennsylvania.
S: Oh wow, that was actually a crazy coincidence because my mom worked in Gloucester and every time I would come to work with her one of her students, I think his name was G——-, would try to propose to me.
T: Must be something with the name G——- I guess.
S: That’s really weird.
T: He was very charming.
S: *laughing* What’s the weirdest thing that has happened to you in this school?
T: I would have to say I have a lot of fond memories from our theatre class last year and trying to use makeup to make people look older. And no one wanted to go back into the school after we did crazy makeup and created costumes out of newspaper.
S: Camille did my makeup and it was so hard to get off!
T: Stage makeup is heavy duty.
S: Hmmm. We were trying to add more questions on with each teacher based on their answers, but I can’t really think of anything.
T: Maybe an example of when I learned from a student?
S: Oh, that’s good.
T: Ugh, now I have to think of an example to answer my own question. When I was in college, I tutored a girl for a couple of years. What I learned from her was that confidence and feeling empowered as a student is sometimes more important than actual content. She was placed with me because she was having trouble with reading, writing and literacy. And I saw that the more she had confidence, the more she realized that she loved to write short stories. And so, she taught me that that was really important. It’s not always about your grades, it can about what gives you joy as a learner.
S: And that concludes our interview.
T: Yay