Q: What has your teaching journey looked like so far?
A: My teaching journey is actually a second career for me. I began my career as an accountant right out of high school, and then I got married, had children, and then I went back to college late in life after my children were grown to get my teaching certification to become a teacher, so I’ve only been teaching for 12 years.
Q: What did you start off teaching?
A: I started off teaching business classes in another district, and then I came over here to Carroll to teach child development and principles of human services, and then just last year I moved into the computer science classes.
Q: What are some of the differences between teaching at Carroll and teaching at a different school district?
A: Some of the differences are probably that we have a split campus, so that’s very unique to our district. And the other district that I taught at was all nine through twelve and one building, and it was very, very crowded. The halls were very crowded, and we probably had a lot of different moving parts that happened because the campus was all together, so it felt very chaotic. I know that that’s traditional for a lot of districts to have nine through twelve together, but I do love the fact that we are split here because it gives students more room to maneuver and more room to be able to do their projects, and we’re a little bit more spaced out that way.
Q: Do you prefer teaching computer science or human services/child development more?
A: I really did enjoy teaching Human Services and child development because that is what my degree is in. I went back to college to study human development, and so I do really have a passion for that. Especially after being a mom and having children, I was able to apply that knowledge to the courses, but I do know that now that my children are grown and have gone off to college and into their own careers that I was ready for something different, and because I had an accounting background I wanted to get back more into the business and computer science courses, so I’m really enjoying those now.
Q: Why did you want to become an accountant in high school?
A: Well, both my mom and dad were accountants. And in my high school years, some of the career technical classes that they offered were typing, which is different for y’all because there were not a lot of computers, and then I took accounting classes, and then I took computer science classes as well, so those were kind of my electives in high school. And, because my mom and dad were also in the accounting world, I kind of worked with them over the summers and learned how to do accounting that way, so it seemed like a natural fit to be able to go into that world because I had some experience from the summers.
Q: Do you think that having kids influenced the way you teach, especially for child development?
A: I think it does. I think teachers do kind of see that difference between if you came right out of college and were teaching right away before you had kids or if you came to teaching after having children. It does give you a different perspective of what teenagers go through because you’ve also gone through that with your own children and of what you can do to be able to be in a good student-teacher relationship and be able to understand their needs and be honest with students about where you might be too. Sometimes teachers have bad days, and sometimes students have bad days, so it’s kind of nice to be able to get that information out in a classroom.
Q: What do you think is the coolest class you’ve ever taught?
A: I do think the child development classes are the coolest classes I’ve ever taught just because you get to actually take the simulator infants home, and you do get to kind of learn about conception all the way through childhood. You get to see what that looks like, you know, in the growing stages and all the different developments that you go through.
Q: Do you like advising DECA and BPA?
A: I do like it just because I wanted to get back into the business world and because I have the business experience from accounting, and I did take BPA in high school myself, so I already had a lot of knowledge about what that club was from being a member in high school. And so, I definitely wanted to make sure, we did not have BPA or DECA clubs when I first came to Carroll, so when I talked to the principal at the time, he said “yes, let’s do it”, and so it has definitely grown. Y’all thrive, everybody thrives in there with their competitions. They kind of get a lot of different skills that are going to help them with college applications or even with their careers later on.
Q: You said you went back to college at an older age. Was it challenging having the college experience at an older age?
It is a little challenging because, you know, I still had one of my children at home and so trying to work around schedules of having children at home and still also being able to go to school. But I think the difference from if I had gone to school right out of high school to now going to school is that you have a lot of options of online learning, and so I was able to do a lot of online learning so that made it a lot easier. I wouldn’t have had those same options if I’d gone straight out of high school and, you know, the cost was a barrier back then too when I was right out of high school. We just didn’t have the money or could afford that, and financial aid was different back then too.
