The teacher interviewed is called Mrs. Sosa. She is originally from North Carolina and moved to Florida at a very young age. She attended most of her schooling here in Miami and received her bachelor’s in arts for Psychology in 2004 from the University of Florida. She has been teaching advanced placement psychology in various high schools ever since.
Mrs. Sosa believes an ideal teacher is one who is compassionate, understanding, and approachable. They must believe in their students. They go the extra mile not just to teach them the material in the textbook but also help them learn about life and themselves. When it comes to what is wrong in the education system, Mrs. Sosa says students are taught to memorize content from a textbook to pass a standardized test causing students to feel overwhelming pressure to compete with others to get into college with straight A’s. She says it is necessary to teach our students practical skills such as how to file taxes and build credit. She believes the education system succeeds in teaching student’s variety of things outside of coursework such as responsibility, organization, tolerance, and respect.
Mrs. Sosa describes her strategies in the classroom to being relatable as well as being able to build meaningful relationships with her students at the school, which in turn makes her students motivated to want to learn and participate in class. “I always strive to show them that their contributions are important and significant,” she says. Her two teaching strategies are to incorporate a variety of teaching styles (such as involving review games, group assignments, hands-on assignments, and video clips to diversify each class period) and to provide lectures that require a lot of student contribution. “Lengthy discussions held by teachers with minimal student input can contribute to student disengagement,” she claims. When trying to get her students to do as instructed, Mrs. Sosa says she makes sure to instill a sense of intrinsic motivation and her students to push them to do their best. From her personal experience as both a student and a teacher, she has learned the importance of not being an overly assertive teacher. “I am patient with every single one of my students, and I make them know I believe in them, and that truly makes a difference,” she adds.
Mrs. Sosa considers individually teaching to be a method of teaching that involves catering to the unique learning needs of each student. She knows her students are learning when they can successfully apply terms to real-life examples and can explain them thoroughly in writing.
Mrs. Sosa will assess their learning from multiple-choice questions, free-response questions, and review games in class. For a teacher to successfully teach students, the teacher must have a strong understanding of course content; they should understand the types of students they are teaching, have a tentative date by which material should be covered, and incorporate a diversity of engaging and relevant activities into their course.
The interview proved to be incredibly insightful, as well as exciting and informative. It has provided a fresh perspective from an experienced veteran in the profession I intend to pursue. I was directed towards some real advice and was allowed the opportunity to ask questions that would spark some compelling dialogue. Being a teacher is not easy, as Mrs. Sosa reveals, there are all sorts of obstacles and conflicts to resolve in a classroom and being a compassionate and understanding teacher will aid in this process. A teacher must go beyond what -is expected of them; you must be willing to invest personal consideration for the well-being of your students, teaching them more than what the curriculum entails.
