Reflection Of My Teacher Interview

I chose to do my teacher interview in my home town at Richard D. Crosby Elementary School. This K-3rd grade building is very new, it was built in 2010. It has 4 pods, one for each grade level and has a large discovery center in each pod. The school is very colorful, with each pod a different color so the children find it easy to go from area to area. I did my interview with Mrs. Doe, a special education teacher. Her room has a lot of materials for learning and is set up to have several work stations for group activities. Mrs. Doe shares her students with other special education teachers and also has a special education classroom aide. My research question is how does a teacher’s perspective on learning reflect theories and concepts in educational psychology? Mrs. Doe is faced with many challenges in her classroom, overcrowding, multi-cultural differences, learning disabilities, several students with low socioeconomic status and English language learners. There are many challenges for Mrs. Doe to deal with, but she has been teaching for 21 years and has a lot of experience. She started out as a regular classroom teacher, but switched to special education and has done so well that when she asked if she could return to the regular classroom setting, the Superintendent begged her to stay in the special education department because of her success.

“According to Woolfolk (2013) pg. 62, there are at least three ways that higher mental functions can be developed through cultural tools and passed on from one individual to another: imitative learning (where one person tries to imitate the other), instructed learning (where learners internalize the instructions of the teacher and use these instructions to self-regulate) and collaborate lear...

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...o teach.”

In conclusion, Mrs. Doe displayed how she uses classroom management and reciprocal teaching as well as group activities to allow children to learn from each other and become models for each other that Vygotsky believed was important for learning. Structure is important to her, but she is also able to keep it fun as well. She said “you joke, laugh, talk, read and do the math.” But more than that, her passion keeps her motivated and her sense of self-efficacy is obvious to me and her students will see it too.

“Woolfolk (2013) pg. 509 noted that some studies found that ratings of teachers’ enthusiasm for their subject are correlated with student achievement gains (Keller, Neumann, & Fischer, 2012).” I believe Mrs. Doe’s perspective on learning reflects the concepts in educational psychology.

These students are very lucky to have a teacher as their teacher.