Teacher Interview Paper

Action Assignment #2: Teacher Interview On the days of September 3rd and September 4th of the year 2016, I interviewed two former teachers of mine from Lincoln Alternative Academy, a high school alternative option in Stillwater, Ok. Aaron Frisby, an English and literature teacher, was interviewed the first day, and Scott Peterman, a Government and social studies teacher, was interviews on the second day. Because of the unique environment of Lincoln, I chose to interview two instructors, in order to gain extra insight into how teachers operate in these alternative education programs. These interviews were conducted in person, at the school, after the regular instruction hours. Both teachers have more than ten years’ worth of experience in teaching …show more content…
They both emphasized that because it is such a small staff, they all become friends at some point. The staff meets on a weekly basis to discuss student progress and challenges, and structure individual student success plans that are implemented in all of their classes, with all teachers on the same page. As Frisby puts it, “We might disagree from time to time on how to handle certain students. But at the end of the day, we all have a lot of respect for each other.” As an alternative education program, that is competency based, No Child Left Behind had little effect on the students of Lincoln Academy. Neither teacher could say that it had a strong bearing on their particular jobs. Regardless of this, they had heard horror stories from their colleagues at the public high school and junior high. “Luckily, we were spared most of the ill effects that I’ve heard so much about” clarifies …show more content…
The best example of this was when I asked about challenging bright students. Peterman was very enthusiastic about doing so, whereas Frisby saw it as an unnecessary strain on a student in a competency-based program, both implemented nearly the exact same technique to aid the student in the same way, for different goals. I honestly was not sure what I was expecting when I began this assignment. I’m glad, however, that I had the opportunity to revisit a familiar place for it. I learned quite a bit, not only about the “teacher mindset”, but also about the people who had helped me quite a bit, in a darker period of my life. And to hear pieces of my own story reflected in theirs, though they were different, was really reassuring that I might be making the right choice, in pursuing