Shelby Lewis Period 1 Summary: I interviewed a retired elementary school teacher named Mrs.

Thayer who was also my fifth grade teacher. I chose my interviewee, because the topic of teaching is an interest of mine, and Mrs. Thayer was a large influence on my life. She was my favorite and most memorable teacher. We discussed many different topics, some regarding the year I was in her class. A key point we discussed is how classrooms now in Las Vegas are different than in other time periods and locations. We discussed topics varying from the classroom environments to future educators.

Student: Hello Mrs. Thayer I am going to begin by introducing the point of this interview. I am interviewing you today to gather information for a project in my United States history class. The concept of this project was to obtain information about a topic of Las Vegas history that interested me. I chose to do mine on the history of teaching in Nevada. I chose to interview you because you were my favorite and most memorable teacher. So, Mrs. Thayer tell me about the first school that you started teaching at in Las Vegas. Interviewee: Ok first of all let me tell you I am so happy to help you with your project. You were always one of my favorite students so Ill start with that. Student: Thank You Interviewee: I began teaching in Las Vegas eight years ago at a school called Darnell Elementary School in the north side of Las Vegas. It is a k5 school and at the time in Las Vegas it was growing very rapidly and they desperately needed teachers. Now I had retired in 2004 and didnt think I was going to work again accept for vo lunteering but it kind of interested me so I applied in Las Vegas and got a teaching credential here. At Darnell it was growing so fast that this very small elementary school had 11 hundred students if you could imagine the whole parking lot, the playground was covered in portables. So I was the fifteenth 3rd grade teacher that they hired that year and I was in a portable way out in the back of the playground and so I had uh 17 students. Because

of this class size reduction and it was a very difficult year as you can imagine in terms of the cafeteria, bathrooms um using copying machines and supplies it was very very difficult. Well the next year Bozarth or Thomson I forget which one but one of those schools was built and we lost half over half of the students and I was able to move inside the building and out of my portable and I took a fifth grade classroom and I just loved it and I stayed in fifth grade for the next seven years. Student: Ok, how has the number of students per classroom changed over the years? Interviewee: Well class size reduction has started for Kindergarten, 1, 2, and 3 and back when I first started teaching that was unheard of I mean you had big classes in the elementary grades now they have more students it seems to me at the high school level I mean we are losing teachers and adding kids to class sizes so we have more at the upper grade level um there was, is a time at the school if you are overcrowded they dont usually add teachers until after what is called count day which is in October when theyre absolutely certain that the students are going to be there so two years at Darnell I had 47 students in my fifth grade well through October in to about the second week of November until they finally hired another teacher. So in Nevada at the fifth grade level I was averaging anywhere from about 33 to 35 36 students a year so it stayed pretty steady and I think that is a lot of kids even at the fifth grade level. Student: Yeah Student: What is your favorite thing about teaching? Interviewee: My favorite thing about teaching is I like interacting with the parents; I like to work with the PTA and all the things that they do their cookie sales, the Halloween carnival or any of those things, working on student of the month with the parents. I just absolutely love my kids I always felt that they were my personal children and loved interacting with them and really making sure that I was the one that made a big difference in their day that it was a positive thing that they came into my class and they interacted with me and it was the best thing that happened to them during that day, so I would say interacting with my kids was number one and then their wonderful parents secondly. Student: What is your least favorite thing about teaching? Interviewee: Well the least favorite thing about teaching lots of times comes from the upper levels of administration sometimes those people the higher up they get the further removed they can say what comes from the classroom the less they seem to know and understand about what goes on in the classroom and sometimes they send down rules and regulations that really we have had no input on so I think my least favorite thing about teaching is when people from above just instigate rules and regs and I h avent

had a say or been part of the decision making process as to what goes on in my classroom and other people just make those decision for me. Student: How has teaching changed in the past 10 years? Interviewee: Wow, the past ten years there have been incredible changes in teaching um I would say probably just if we have to pick one thing I would say maybe the curriculum is the biggest change it just seems unfortunate that they want us to teach so much at each grade level that instead of keeping curriculum a little bit narrow and going into depth into subjects we just keep adding more and more and more and more it seems to me when I was teaching lets say fourth grade that the things many of the things that they were teaching in fourth grade they are now teaching in second grade they just keep pushing down a lot of the curriculum for the kids so it becomes very very difficult we have more to teach and we go into less detail, so I think that is the biggest change in the last 10 years. Student: what can you conclude about schools now and schools then what has changed for the better, for the worst? Interviewee: Ok let me think of some things for the better first because there are a lot of better and a lot of worse in my mind, one of the things thats better I think is there is more emphasis on data and testing we seem to be looking at the results of kids test and then making decisions based on those test results you now on whether to intervene or what kind of interventions that their supposed to have uh we used to be on our own with that and so if you were a good teacher you did that and got good results if you were not so good you really were not able to zoom in on your kids and find out what they needed and now the district actually does it for you they they schedule times for testing and they rely heavily on data. Um so another better thing I think is technology. I kind of have mixed emotions sometimes about technology because I do think that they person that stands in front of kids in the most important but there is a wonderful emphasis on technology and kids are so good at it and we can get information very very quickly. Let me see I think teacher training is actually better now in the old days we didnt really have to take a lot of classes but now instead of just being generally credentialed you have to be highly qualified and that has to say that on your credential and in order to do that you have to continue to take classes you have to take test and so you really have to know more you cant just sit back and be a teacher forever and never take any classes. Um lets see for better Id say one of the better things is and this is controversial but but I feel that its a better thing is that we have what you call you push in or you include special education students in you classroom and this can be anywhere from on an autistic scale a learning disability children and what happens is the special education teacher comes into your room and you team teach and you kind of work with all of the kids as a group and you dont isolate so much the students with learning disabilities or

special needs and we all kind of work together and I think thats the way the world runs and it is hard around the teachers and I know a lot of teachers dont like doing that but I think its better for everybody because it is really how the real world works out there. Um in the old days we didnt have to pass any kind of test to graduate high school if you could believe it. You just took your classes and if you passed all of your classes then you graduate from high school now you have a very rigorous proficiency test and if you dont pass that proficiency test you dont graduate so I really think that is for the better. One of the things I wouldnt say its the worst but school safety is such an issue today I dont remember any real big concerns about school safety in the old days we used to do a fire drill and that was about it but right now the kids have to know how to do a whole school evacuation they have to know how to duck and cover they have to know how to do a shelter in place weve even had drills where we go out to the playground and they have to know how to roll on the ground and stay low in case there is a shooter. So I mean it is good we are doing this training but its just kind of worse in terms of how society is today. The other thing that in my opinion was worse we pay less attention to the affective domain and by the affective domain is like the feeling hood about yourself I used to spend a lot of time with my classes doing team building, doing special things for student of the month things that were helping kids kind of work with each other well there is no time for any of that now at all I mean you cannot improvise your curriculum you just you have to do what is given to you and you cannot do any affective domain type teaching and I I miss that very much. It is all business now and all academics. Um let me think the other worst thing now. This was my last year of teaching and I was just appalled I was given a schedule for my fifth grade and it said you know from 9 oclock to 9:45 you will teach this at 9:45 to 10:15 you will teach this and I had no say in the schedule what so ever it was given to me by the office and every single fifth grade teacher had a follow the same schedule we all had to do the same thing so I mean I think that is worse because it takes the art of teaching right out of the picture you cannot be creative and do what you think is right it is all given to you by by the district. Um I think kids need more to motivate them today I think it is harder to motivate the kids I I think its in a way parents distress schools a little bit more because you have some very bad things happening with the teachers and coaches and kids have to watch it all the time so that part of it is not as good as it used to be and the one constant that has stayed the same in the last ten years which to me is bad is whatever state you are in or wherever you are they always spend more in athletics than in the arts and that has always been a special peeve with me that we wouldnt do more in music and art for kids than we do in athletics so I guess in a nutshell those would be the best and the worst things over the last ten years. Student: How has the required curriculum changed?

Interviewee: Well the required curriculum has changed quite a bit because now we have national standards; we have state standards and before I could look at a book and I could pick and choose you know what units I wanted to do. Lets say especially in Social Studies or science and now there are standards that have to be taught each month and by the same grade level has to teach the same standards so everyone is teaching the exact same thing at the exact same time ok so that is one difference. Student: Are children more prepared when they come to the classroom now? Interviewee: You know what I think kids are more prepared parents are very involved in their childrens schooling and I think kids are more prepared I mean they know what the stakes are and theirs homework required by each school and so many hours for each grade level and I think I think most good teachers require homework and for their kids to be prepared and their parents want them to be successful and I and I dont remember homework being as much years ago as its now I mean it is a real extension of the curriculum to be able to do lots of homework you know even in the summertime with the summer reading programs and things like that. Student: How have the classroom procedures and environment changed? Interviewee: Classroom procedures and the environment Classroom procedures and environments havent really changed too much. I mean discipline is discipline and kids are to line up and come in orderly and sit down and get ready to work most schools that I know of like Darnell I mean there is no nonsense and no what you call like fun time. We used to have fun Fridays I mean that is a procedural change that that is no longer at all aloud. I used to have lots of games for kids and we would really work hard all week and for the last hour of school on Friday you know we would be able to play games so procedurally I could not have any administrator walk into my classroom on Friday and my kids would be playing games. Id probably gettin written up for it now because it is not aloud I mean we have to be teaching something specific every time to those standards so thats a big procedural change. The other procedural change I remember that schools used to do big productions for student of the month it was a big special day and parents came and we took a lot of time out for student of the month and now they just dont do it anymore. They do student of the month but they make it a very quick thing it doesnt interfere with the schedule or the curriculum so that actually there is no teaching time that is taken away because of student of the month. So some of the again the affective or the nice or the fun parts of school I think procedurally have changed. Student: Are parents more involved with the school and student work now or then? Interviewee: Well I find that parents are a little bit less involved now and the problem is that most families need moms and dads both to work. Many years ago the women stayed home. Ok I started teaching over forty years ago so moms were home and they

were able to help out with the school and the PTA was in the school a lot. So now when moms have to work and dads are usually working they uh spend less time, theyll come to parent teacher conferences and maybe the special events that are at the school and performances for their kids but I think just generally being around the school and volunteering in their students classroom the only people that you usually see are the moms that are not working and those are not the majority of the moms in todays society. Student: Why did you become a teacher? Interviewee: Well my dad was a he was the athletic director at Brown University which is a college in Rhode Island and we grew up right off the campus and there was a there was a school for the professors of the kids and I used to volunteer over there at the school when I was a teenager and I did a lot of babysitting and in my day the professions open to women were usually like either nursing or teaching it wasnt like it was it is today I mean the world your oyster today for young women but back then it wasnt so and if you wanted to have a career and also get married and have children it always seemed that teaching was the most logical so I kind of combined my love of kids and the desire to get married and have my own children and still keep working. That teaching just was a perfect fit for me. Student: Overall how many different schools did you teach at what was different and what was similar about some of them? Interviewee: Well Ive taught at many different schools. Darnell at the end of my career teaching at Darnell was just an incredible experience because there was a lot of parent involvement. Its a very unusual school, its a high performing school, wonderful students, wonderful parents, lots of activities, things going on all the time, very positive school environment and when I first began teaching I began in a school that was 80 miles from the Mexican border so all the students spoke Spanish and their parents spoke Spanish and it was very difficult to administer the English language curriculum we had bilingual teachers and so it was a high poverty school area where everyone was on free and reduced lunch so we needed to do a lot of things for the community like open the school on Saturday and let the parents have access to the school library and computers at that time and just do more as a community for the parents where here at Darnell I would say this is the absolute opposite ok where every student practically at Darnell was an achieving student that came from a family that spoke English so we didnt have the challenges of second language learners. So I guess that would be the biggest you know difference in the two types of schools that Ive taught.