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TRANSCRIPTION 3

TEACHER 5

RESEARCHER: Interview with Teacher 5. August 23, 2003.

RESEARCHER: Good morning. We want to welcome you here today, and thank you for agreeing to take part in our research study. The purpose of our focus group interview is to help us examine and more deeply understand teachers’ intentions to remain in the field of teaching and/or to pursue future graduate education. We’re also interested in the impact that graduate school has made on teachers’ orientations to these intentions. We want to remind you that our intention is to submit the results of our research to the American Educational Research Association for presentation at its annual meeting in April 2004. We also intend to write and submit for publication an empirical article that discusses the results of the research. Participation in the focus group session will give you the opportunity, if you wish, to become a contributing author on either of the projects just described. Authorship would require some additional minor contributions beyond participation in the focus group, the nature of which will be described later. At the least, your participation in the focus group will earn you formal acknowledgement in the body of all papers and presentations pertaining to the research if you so desire. We would like to emphasize that this focus group session is not designed to be an evaluation of the masters of education program from which you graduated, although it’s understandable that certain aspects of that program influenced the answers that you will provide. Your confidentiality will be maintained at all times. The sessions are being tape recorded for transcription purposes. Do you have any questions?

TEACHER 5: Uh, no.

RESEARCHER: Okay. Well, let’s begin then, Teacher 5. The first question is: What were your original reasons for going into teaching?

TEACHER 5: (Chuckling) Um, probably a little bit different than most people. I would guess that they had, like, this desire to mold minds and all that stuff. I was looking for a job when I got out of school, and I just happened to call the person who is the coordinator of a program I had been in in middle school. And I was calling her on a completely unrelated, um, you know, topic. I asked her about a reunion that we were supposed to have, and she said, “Well, you know, there’s this teaching position open. Since I have you on the phone, would you be interested?” And my, um, plan, and my guess was always, as I imagined it, I would go into the production area, like be in the business and the industry for awhile and then kind of retire to teaching or maybe leave it and go into teaching. Um, so as it were, I did plan to teach and kind of share the excitement that I had and that I got from all of my teachers when I went through the middle school and high school programs. Um, but I planned to do it at a much later date than I’m doing it right now. My original intention for teaching right now was I needed a job and I didn’t want to do construction. (Both laughing) So I became a teacher, but, overall I did want to be able to share some of my enthusiasm and knowledge and experience with other people.

RESEARCHER: Okay, so, um, would you say that this is an accurate statement: that your intentions about going into teaching were more related to its usefulness as a job than it was related to some sense of inner-self needing to teach, and so on and so forth?

TEACHER 5: Right.

RESEARCHER: Okay. Any other comments that you’d like to add in terms of your original intentions for going into teaching?

TEACHER 5: Um, well, I’ve always been the kind of person who likes to find out and show other people. I tend to take on that role and it—teaching for me seemed like a great way to integrate my need for interpersonal interaction and leadership and just knowledge in general, like I have this real desire for knowledge. I always want to know things, so teaching would allow me to do all of those things sort of at the same time.

RESEARCHER: So, in a sense, I think what I’m hearing you say is that teaching actually does have something to do with your sense of self.

TEACHER 5: (Agreeing) Right. I really did want to teach at some point. My current position right now didn’t come from me going to school and saying, “This is what I want to do with my life.” It came from just a [circumstantial] phone call. But I did want to teach at some point and those were the reasons why.

RESEARCHER: Good, okay. Um, the second question then is: what were your original reasons for going to graduate school?

TEACHER 5: Um, I went to grad school because, again, I have this overwhelming desire to learn more than I already know. No matter what I know I need to learn more about whatever. Um, and I knew that I had to—more or less—enroll in a graduate program anyway because I needed to meet certification requirements, um, and I happen—and I had started that, taking the course, that summer course that [HR] took or taught and that’s how I met you and oh my gosh! This program is great ‘cuz it’s just what I wanna do and it meets some of the things I have to do and it’s two years and it’s sort of a pre-molded kind of, um, already figured out what you have to take. So, graduate school for me really filled requirements as well as filled that need for me to still be that perpetual professional student that I seem to be.

RESEARCHER: Okay, good. So, again, I mean, it sounds to me, again, you’re talking about the usefulness of graduate school as well as that piece of it that was feeding that internal need—intrinsic need of yours to just continue to know. Um, other comments about your original reasons for going to grad school? Anything you’d like to add?

TEACHER 5: No, I think that’s pretty much it.

RESEARCHER: Okay, um, third question: Why do you stay in teaching? What’s keeping you teaching?

TEACHER 5: Um, well, my first year teaching was (pause) challenging because not having had a lot of formal education training, there’s a lot of stuff that I did, and I’m secretly a perfectionist—although you wouldn’t know it if you hung around with me (chuckling)—but I do, I need to do things right and I don’t wanna do anything if I’m not gonna do it well. So, I felt like even though my first year went more or less well, I wanted to do it again because I wanted to share all of my excitement and enthusiasm—again, for the media—with the kids. So the second year what kept me in teaching—and the third year—is I wanted to continue to do better. Um, by the time I got to my third year I felt like there was a lot of external things. I mean, last year, my third year, was very, very stressful. Um, so at that point as much as I would have liked to stay in teaching I thought that I might end up leaving, like, the system completely. Um, what brought me here is that my old media teacher from high school decided that he wanted to teach middle school. So, we basically did a big swap, so I moved up to high school so I’m in his position. Um, and he moved to another middle school to do more or less the same thing that I’d been doing. Um, and so I guess probably a cross between new challenges and perfecting what I can do—or improving what I can do—is probably what’s gonna keep me here for years. Like, when I finally get it and I’m doing it right, yeah, I’ll probably leave (laughing). I’ll probably be like, “Okay, I’m right where I want to be. This is great! I’m gonna leave before anything happens (laughing), before I do something wrong and I have to start all over!”

RESEARCHER: So teaching and your own education seems to have something to do with your wanting to be challenged and wanting to keep moving forward. Um, okay. Other ideas about why you stay in teaching?

TEACHER 5: It’s a lot of fun.

RESEARCHER: It’s fun? Okay, so you like it?

TEACHER 5: Yeah, I like it.

RESEARCHER: Okay, have you—do you enjoy going into your classroom with your kids?

TEACHER 5: Um, well, this year’s a whole new experience, so I’m looking forward to it. Um, last year, didn’t feel that as much. My first two years I really did, like, I’d get up and get there at six o’clock in the morning and I’d stay there till six o’clock at night ‘cuz there were so many things to do and make something new, even if it was just moving a bookshelf or a table. Um, it was always a new challenge or a new “something to do” or create a new project. So, aside from my third year being tat wildcard sort of “let’s pretend that year didn’t happen”, I just like it. I have a lot of fun with the kids. I have a lot of fun with the staff.

RESEARCHER: Great. Um, fourth question is: if you are thinking about leaving teaching, why?

TEACHER 5: Um, the only thing I think that would cause me to leave teaching completely, um, would probably end up being the adults. Like, other adults not necessarily on my level like my peers, but typically—like, sometimes it can be administration, sometimes it’s not inherently administration but it’s people who are over you in some other way, um, like, they’re head of your department, they’re head of your grade level, they’re head of whatever. Um, and sometimes it can be the students. Like, there were a lot of days that I said, “Why am I doing this to myself?” Um, and only for a split-second would I be “I can’t handle the kids” and then I realize “Okay, well, I need to!” Like, if there’s something going wrong in my classroom then I’m the one who needs to fix it. I can’t look at the kids and be like, “This is your fault!” ‘cuz they’re not the teachers, I am. So, just for a second, sometimes it would be the students. I just don’t want to deal with them anymore, um, but I think that’s probably what put me out of middle school because there was a lot of stuff in my particular middle school that was going on that I just didn’t like and I couldn’t quite find a way to fix it in there. Maybe I could go back and fix it, I dunno. Um, the only other thing that would get me to leave teaching—because I really think that I’m gonna like it here—is if I found a position in the field, like, in the professional field, um, because that’s really where I wanna be. It’s a very difficult field to get into when you’re older.

RESEARCHER: You mean media?

TEACHER 5: Media production. Um, I’m ultimately, I’d love to be a producer, specifically a children’s television producer. Um, when I was in school I did an honor’s thesis on—well, I did an honor’s thesis on [media and] literacy—but one of my focuses was adolescent, like, how the adolescent development is not chronicled anywhere on television. There’s nothing for the kids who are twelve to twenty, or maybe, like, twelve to eighteen. Um, there’s a lot of stuff developed mentally for elementary, preschool, that kind of kid, and once you get past high school there’s not a lot of developmental things you need to do, but there’s this key part of adolescence that the media could support and it doesn’t. So that’s what I really, really, really want to do. If I could find a way to do it and teach at the same time, I would, but just the way that the, like, the machine is moving, um, it’s very difficult to do two things at once like that. It’s hard to have an outlet in production, um, if you haven’t had one already, and be teaching full-time. So I think that that would probably be the only thing: if I found there was a job that I could take that would be in production that could have me kind of in that loop—‘cuz, like, education’s always gonna be here and, for as long as I work in M County, there’s almost always going to be a TV production job somewhere. Other counties, maybe not, but there’s not always gonna be a really good position for me in the professional field.

RESEARCHER: Alright. The fifth question is: what effect did graduate school have on your orientations to stay in teaching or not?

TEACHER 5: Um—

RESEARCHER: —and maybe a better way to start is did it have an effect? And, if it did, what effect was that?

TEACHER 5: It had an effect my first year. I really put everything that I learned in my first year into my teaching. I could look at my kids differently. Um, a lot of the stories that I heard from your class about, I think, um, one of your daughters said, “How could they do this to us?” like it had nothing to do with that. I don’t remember the whole situation but I see that in my kids, especially when I was in middle school. I saw that in them and I really couldn’t [put it to practice]. I know that the kids could be completely stupid and I’m like, “This is the same person. How did that, you know, happen?” It all made sense. All the reading stuff I learned, everything from the first year really, really helped me. I think it made me a better teacher. The second year I really did not get a whole lot out of it. There wasn’t a whole lot that I was able to successfully implement. Um, it really stressed me out and—in some ways—I think that probably affected my ability to teach. Therefore, I didn’t have it in me to push as hard or to fight as hard or to think clearly about what I can do in my own classroom. I really think that my teaching suffered, my planning suffered, and my class in general suffered, um, my last year in my masters program

RESEARCHER: Okay and did those feelings or impressions have an effect on your thinking about staying in teaching then?

TEACHER 5: Yeah, because I told myself that I would be willing to leave completely, like, not even having another job. Like, I just—I needed to get out of the building. I didn’t want to teach anymore. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the kids, the building, the school, anything. I just wanted to be out. Um, I guess it’s not so much what I learned but maybe the fact that there was nothing I was directly getting from those classes that I could put in and that could make me stronger and make me feel better about teaching and give me more tools and thinks to learn. Um, that might have been part of it, so …

RESEARCHER: So, let me just make sure I’m understanding you. The stress of doing the work, coursework, was high and you didn’t see the utility value in the courses, which decreased your interest in the actual practice of teaching. (Teacher 5 agreeing) Alright, um, other comments? Is there anything you want to add to that question? (Pause) Alright, then the next question is: if teaching is less important to you now than when you started graduate school, why? So I guess the first question really is: is teaching less important to you now than when you started graduate school?

TEACHER 5: Now, at this very moment, no. At this very moment I see myself kind of—I feel like I’ve—I’ve had that time to sort of recover and come back to where I know I normally would have been. I was definitely in, like, a negative space for the last year, so, had you asked me that last year it would have been “Absolutely.” I wouldn’t do it. I wanted to get out. But now I’m kind of back to normal, and … [mumbling something] … um, it was less important to me because I felt like none of it made sense and it was just so much to try to put stuff together and I felt like I wasn’t doing things right ‘cuz I wasn’t incorporating them and it just made me overwhelmed with stuff. And, that’s what it was, it was just stuff. It wasn’t tools, it wasn’t tricks, it wasn’t, um, you know, ways to think about things, it wasn’t concepts that directly applied, it was just stuff. And that’s probably what it was that might have lessened my, um, desire to teach.

RESEARCHER: Um, if you take that year out, um, would you say that, at this point and time, teaching is as important to you as it was when you first started?

TEACHER 5: Yes.

RESEARCHER: Okay, so that valuing of teaching, so to speak, has not changed if you sort of remove that wildcard year.

TEACHER 5: Yeah, I definitely feel like teaching is really, really important. I think teachers should be one of the highest paid people across the board because if you know something, somebody taught you. I mean, yeah, okay, you could’ve taught yourself, but at some point someone taught you, if not how to read the directions or how to think about them or whatever. Someone had to teach you, and I think that that’s something that we don’t spend a lot of time praising, um, and valuing. So my, um, thoughts on teaching are definitely still pretty high.

RESEARCHER: Um, the next question I think you may feel that you’ve already answered but we can take a look at it. What specific effects did graduate school have on your changed feelings regarding teaching?

TEACHER 5: Yeah, high stress, low results, um, really made me sort of—not necessarily embittered—but, um, really sort of questioning the whole “Why am I doing this? Why am I bothering? I’m not getting anything out of it!”

RESEARCHER: Why you’re doing the teaching or why you’re doing grad school?

TEACHER 5: Both. In grad school, I’m thinking “Why am I doing grad school?” because it’s not helping my teaching any. In fact, it’s decreasing my effectiveness in teaching, so why am I doing any of it? Um, so, I think that that’s one of the effects and, you know, it wasn’t across the board. It was just that year that made it really difficult.

RESEARCHER: Okay, the next question we may have already addressed, too, but let’s read it. If teaching is more important to you now than when you started graduate school, why?

TEACHER 5: Teaching in general isn’t more important. Teaching well is way more important to me now, especially—and what’s interesting is I hadn’t thought about it until I just, you know, heard the question—but I know that I have gone to—and just in my own teaching now—I’ve thought about teachers I’ve had in the past and how excellent they were or how poor they were in something. Um, coming back to my own high school where a lot of the staff that was here when I was here is still here, I can go up to them and say, “You know, you once did this really cool lesson about such-and-such and it was ten years ago.” And they’re like, “Yeah, I remember doing that.” And I was like, “I just wanna tell you that I still think about that, you know, however many years later.” And that really impresses me that someone was able to teach something well, like, not just thinking “This is me teaching.” They taught it well, and that’s really more important to me now especially—you appreciate it more when you have teachers that don’t teach something well and you wish they had because either you didn’t get anything out of it or then you had to go back and relearn it and it just made it more difficult for you. But teaching well is more important to me than teaching.

RESEARCHER: Okay, again, probably we’ve talked about this a little bit but what specific effects did graduate school have on your changed feelings regarding teaching? I guess we’re now talking about your, um, increased value on teaching well. Did grad school have any effects on that?

TEACHER 5: Mm-hmm (agreeing). I think grad school, um, helped me sort of see the difference between teaching and teaching well. Alright, you can teach and maybe people get it, maybe people don’t, depending on your definition of “teach”, but if you teach well everyone—either everyone gets it or those who don’t get it know that they didn’t get it ‘cuz there are times when—

RESEARCHER: —Can you just repeat what you just said?

TEACHER 5: Yeah, if you teach well, the people in your class—your students, whoever—will get it or they won’t, but they will understand that they didn’t get it. If you’re just teaching and you’re not teaching well, you might have kids that get it but then you might have kids or people that don’t get it, but they don’t know that they didn’t get it until they take a test or write a paper. You know, you write “You didn’t get it” and then they’re still kind of where they started. Um, so I think that I learned that in grad school.

RESEARCHER: Can you elaborate a little bit on how you feel you learned that? What happened in graduate school that made you realize that?

TEACHER 5: Um, I guess the difference between taking a class where I—I knew what questions to ask to help myself. I could figure out the specific question. “This is the part that I don’t understand. Can you go over it?” or “This is the theory that I don’t get.” Or “How does this specifically apply?” versus listening to a lecture—and I have no clue what is going on—but not even knowing where to begin. Rather than, you know, aside from saying, “Can you just say that all over again?” and, like, notes don’t make sense ‘cuz you’re just kind of writing what they’re saying, like, there’s no connect. Um, there’s a lot of assumptions being made. “We assume that you all know this” but everything’s going so fast that I don’t get a chance to say “No, don’t assume. I don’t know that.” There’s, you know, pressure that no one else seems to be asking questions. Everyone else seems to get it, and it’s not till the end of class that you realize that no one else got it either but you don’t want to be the one to ask questions, because at such a level—and there were certain times where I felt like myself and others were reminded of this more than we needed to—at the graduate level, you’re expected to know this and you’re expected to be able to do this. But, you know what, if you don’t, how do you get a chance to say, “I don’t understand this”? Because—and this is something you teach in classes—if you ask this question, you can guarantee that there’s someone else in the room who needed to know that same answer. If there’s too much pressure on you to know it—and if you don’t know it—instead of getting a direct answer, you get “Why don’t you know it?” It makes you real hesitant and you start to shut down and I think that there were times where I just started to shut down ‘cuz I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how to ask questions that would help me understand.

RESEARCHER: So I just, again wanna make sure I’m understanding you but it sounds to me like you’re saying your experience of being a student—and knowing that you’re a competent student—being that student in a class that’s taught well versus a class that is not taught well helped you realize what it must be like for your students.

TEACHER 5: Yeah (both laughing), so while I’m sitting and doodling and drawing and looking out the window and I was like, “Man! Is this what my kids do?” (Laughing) The one thing that I knew I would do is that—I guess that might be one benefit—is that I didn’t have kids that were sort of looking around or I would continue to teach, stop, everyone else is kind of “Alright, you guys get it? Alright, go.” And I would target those kids that I knew didn’t get it and I could go to them and say, “Um, do you know what we’re doing?” And usually they’d be like, “I have no clue.” And they wouldn’t come to me but I knew that I had to go to them because that’s what I felt a good teacher needed to do. They needed to be keeping score even when the other kids weren’t or even when kids weren’t. So, yeah …

RESEARCHER: Okay. Alright, thank you. Last question: What impacts your decision on whether or not to pursue further graduate education?

TEACHER 5: Money. If I could do it for free, I would. Um, and actually having gone through this program has given me a lot of insight. I actually, um, my family teased me even though they know how much trouble I had finishing the program here and going through it and, um, especially towards the end. Once I, like, recovered, they’re like, “Alright, ready for a PhD?” I said, “Okay, don’t even talk to me about that!” (Laughing) Because I know that that’s difficult but I was actually secretly considering going for a second masters, um, in something more related to my field, something media related. Um, but I have all the strategies now. I’m gonna have Post-It notes all the time and I’m gonna record things and ask questions and do all that stuff. Um, again, I mean, I think I’m really just a lifetime learner. I’m just addicted to learning and sitting in a classroom and raising my hand and asking questions.

RESEARCHER: And that’s—I mean it sounds to me like you’re saying that—learning’s important to you. It’s just part of who you are.

TEACHER 5: Right. I always have to know something. (Both laughing) Always have to know more than I know already.

RESEARCHER: Okay, any other comments that you’d like to add to anything we have said?

TEACHER 5: Um, no, I don’t think so. I think that, overall, I would suggest everyone every once in awhile go be student again.

RESEARCHER: You mean every teacher or everyone?

TEACHER 5: No, I would say—I mean obviously there’s gonna be individuals that that would probably not be a good thing, but I really think that it puts into perspective so much, especially as a teacher, when you go and you have to be a student. Not just a little [in-service] class but, like, when you’re a student, you’re receiving a grade, you’re doing this for credit. Um, it really does put things in perspective for you, and every once in awhile you get into this thing of teaching and you’re the teacher and they’re the learners and it’s nice to switch. It’s nice to be that person who has to take in new information that you don’t know, you’re not familiar with ‘cuz I think it helps you with your own teaching. Um, to make sure that you were doing whatever it takes to get kids to either understand or know that they don’t understand.

RESEARCHER: I think it’s one of the hardest transitions that teacher’s make into our program. I see it in the first semester, that is, becoming the student again and switching roles.

TEACHER 5: (Agreeing) That’s why it’s probably easier for me since I had been a student just a year before, so it wasn’t such a huge disconnect.

RESEARCHER: Alright, well, I thank you very, very much (pause) for meeting with me today and, um, that’s it for today.

TEACHER 5: Alright.

RESEARCHER: Thank you.