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I always loved school and wanted to become a teacher for as long as I can remember. My two sisters and I always played “school” as children. One of my aunts was a teacher in NY City and sometimes she would bring us to her school on special days. My elementary school and high school prepared me well in English and math, but not very well in science or social studies. When I got to college (a women’s Catholic college), I found that many of the students had a better education than I did, which made college quite a challenge. In college, I majored in French and minored in Spanish. I also had a minor in Philosophy (18 required credits) and nearly a minor in Theology (17 required credits). Though I wanted to be a teacher, I didn’t have room in my program to take education courses. I would have had to drop Spanish, but I thought it was more important to have another language. After getting my BA, I substitute taught in the district where I lived and where my mother worked as a secretary. I was 21 and I subbed in grades 9 through 12. They put me anywhere—science, math, art, music, English, foreign language, P.E., chemistry—wherever they needed a body! In those days, you just needed a college degree. I enjoyed doing all of it—except general music classes. They were very large and unruly—about 50 students in the class. I asked to NEVER have that class again. After college, I went to Johns Hopkins University on a fellowship for teaching and got my Master of Arts in Teaching Foreign Languages (M.A.T.) 3) What subjects did you teach? During my teaching internship in Maryland, I taught French and Spanish, Level 1 and French Level 2 in grades 9-12. When I got my Master’s degree, I came back to Long Island (NY) and got a job in the Wantagh public schools as a foreign language teacher for grades 7-12. I lost my job while I was out on maternity leave, due to an excess of teachers. For several years, I substitute taught a few days a week in various districts. Then a school district hired me to teach Hispanic high school students English as a Second Language. I discovered that I loved working with the English Language Learners. Twelve years later, the district where I had taught French and Spanish hired me as a fulltime teacher of English as a Second Language.
4) What was your proudest moment in school as a teacher? I think my proudest moment was when one of the students who spoke no English in Kindergarten graduated from high school as the valedictorian of her class. Also, many of my former ELL students have become citizens, graduated from college, and have become productive human beings. All of those things make me proud that I was part of that journey. 5) What did you like and dislike most about teaching? I loved seeing the students make progress over a period of a few months, for example: from nonspeaking to speaking full sentences; from not writing to writing phrases and then paragraphs; from writing paragraphs to 500-word essays. Watching students make progress made me very happy that they would be able to be productive citizens in the U.S. However, a lot of work goes into teaching: figuring out what each child needs and finding the materials best suited for him/her; writing lesson plans and then adjusting them when they don’t work; realizing that you are just not getting through to some students and you have to find a different approach; doing grades and report cards. The most difficult thing about teaching was to let the students go from the program when they were ready to be on their own. The thing I disliked most was saying “Goodbye” when they graduated! 6) What are some things you wish more people understood about teaching? I wish people knew that teachers put a lot of time and effort into their work to prepare for each day. Teachers spend hours after dinner and on weekends preparing lessons. Sometimes, the best plans can be undone by an incident that disrupts the class; people should know that it’s not easy to handle a disruptive student in a firm, fair way that doesn’t violate that student’s dignity. They should know that most teachers are in the profession because they love children and want to help them grow to be loving, caring, educated human beings—not because they will have the summers off. People should understand that teachers are hired on a salary that is spread over the twelve
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