A: One year

A; Take college classes, student teaching time/ field experience, take teaching minnesota exam, you must pass.

A; Community involvement, participation in school events

A: Yes, all the time 

A: A Lot of planning, learn curriculum, develop lessons, a lot of overtime, trial and error

A: Only 2 personal days they can rollover, 12 sick days. You choose how you want to be paid, either spread check for whole year or just get paid the 9 months. If you wanna get paid more you need to get higher education like masters. Salary is very low, $38,000 a year. Works in Waconia and gets observed by principle, after 3 years you can get the tenier. 

A: It’s not appropriate, after the student graduates it is ok.

A: Problem solving skills, how to build positive relationships, and life long learning skills. 

A: Community building is a big thing in her classroom, everyday there is a morning meeting with the class. Each kid in the class has their own job. Team building games. Practicing asking questions.

A: When there is mutual respect in the classroom, when you can see students solving problems on their own.  Ready for lessons, when kids are laughing and smiling while being engaged in the class.

A:Try to do positive reinforcement, focus on the positive things and reward the ones who are doing positive things.  For kids doing very bad things, give one warning and tell them what the punishment will be if she sees it again. She will also take away privileges away from the kids. If it is severe enough they receive a violation and a notice gets sent home to the parents and they have to meet with the principle.

A:Her mom is a teacher so she grew up around that environment, she also worked at a camp where she learned to love to be around kids.

A; Try to use all kinesthetic, auditory, and visual ways of teaching. She gives movement breaks during class for the kids. Flexible grouping where you teach a lesson for 15 min and then put the kids in even groups and teach them how those kids need to be taught.

A: The first year is always the hardest but the more you teach the lower your stress gets and your stress management goes down. “You're not doing it for the money, you do it because you care about the kids learning.”

A: Set an expectation for things being good enough, not perfect.

A: Go by “tight and loose” school determines the tight spots, and teachers get to put lose things and adjust their lessons to how to make them feel comfortable.

A: Probably around 20 hours

A: There are so many great things. Building relationships with students, seeing the kids excited about school. Seeing the students be excited about learning. Being a part of the school community in a whole.

A: The things that are out of your control like home life and parental support.

A: Absolutely 

A: You are given a curriculum and you can follow it closely or adjust them to how her kids need to learn. She also gets ideas from teachers on her team. She also yous a website called teachers pay teachers.

A: Yes, the quicker you learn the names the quicker the classroom managment is. Practice the names before meeting them. Always use their name when you talk to them, repeat the names as many times possible and you will get them.

A: Yes, she ran out of her budget 2 months into the school year. She will buy things to give to the kids as rewards, books, stickers, labels for books, and many other things.  

A: She groups them in groups by their skill level and helps them individually, they also can move ahead in the workbooks, many of them can teach themselves. There is also a gifted program in the school that the students can test into.

Dear Ms. Elias, 

My name is Sara Janssen and I am a senior at White Bear. I am in Education Career Lab, I chose to take this class because I love to work with kids. I have thought a lot about teaching elementary and this is a good opportunity to see if I would like it. A little about me is I love to play soccer, I have played my whole life and I was one of the captains this past year for the school team. After school everyday I work at Children's Discovery Academy where I am an aid for all the one year olds. I absolutely love it, it’s where I started to get the idea of wanting to be a teacher. 

Throughout my life in school I have had good and bad teachers. One teacher that changed my view on school was my 7th grade history teacher. He taught his classes like no other teacher I have ever had. He would teach us by using activities where he made us feel like we were in the certain time we were learning about. When we learned about slave trade he made us feel like we were the slaves on the boats, it was scary but so fun and different. His teaching made me want to be like him and make kids smile as much as he made us smile. 

When I think about a good teacher I think of someone who is passionate about their job, someone who loves being there. A good teacher needs to want to teach their kids and see them succeed in school. Another quality that I think is important is the willingness to have fun. A lot of kids don’t like to learn because it’s boring but if the teacher makes it fun then the kids will be attentive and willing to participate. The last important quality I think is a teacher who good at controlling the class and being stern when needed. It’s great to have the students like you and be close with you but they also need to know who is in charge and know that they need to respect the teacher. Two strengths I have is I like to have fun, I like to make kids laugh and smile. With that said I have a hard time disciplining a child when it’s needed, I don’t like to see kids upset. Another strength I have is I’m creative, I am good at coming up with fun activities to do. One weakness that I have is speaking in front of people and that’s a teacher's main job so I would have to get past that fear. 

In this class I am hoping to find out more about if this is what I want to do when I get out of college and see if it is the right career choice for me. I am here to help you with whatever you need me for, it could be to hang things up or just keep the kids occupied when you need to finish something, whatever you need I can do. Thank you so much for this amazing opportunity, I am so excited to get to know you and your amazing students.

-Sara Janssen