It took Janet Munroe-Carpenter some time to decide to become a high school
teacher. But once she did, there was no looking back. She has been teaching
math for nearly 30 years.
"I was kind of a late bloomer and didn't really make up my mind until pretty
much the end of my undergraduate degree," says Munroe-Carpenter. "I got my
degree in mathematics... and basically asked myself the question, 'What do
you do with a degree in mathematics?' I guess the first thing that came to
my mind was: You teach."
Munroe-Carpenter says she'd had some memorable and skilled teachers and
thought it was something she could do well.
The most important quality a teacher should have is patience, says Munroe-Carpenter.
It's also important to be insightful about the issues students are dealing
with in their personal lives.
"You really have to be aware of the problems they may be going through,
or issues with other students, like one bullying another or picking on another,
that kind of thing," says Munroe-Carpenter.
High school science teacher Carrie Jones also says that patience is the
number one thing a teacher needs: "Patience for people who don't always get
it," she says. "You have to be able to explain different ways to approach
a problem. So you have to be a master at just seeing things from a different
perspective."
Jones says creativity is also important. "I think also a tolerance for
ambiguity, because you just never know what situation you're going to be in
from day to day," she says. "And you have to be a good decision maker too,
because you'll be asked to make decisions on the spot quite a bit."
"Obviously, you need to like kids," says high school chemistry teacher
Richard Goodman. "And more importantly, you need to have a passion, I think,
for a subject area that you're interested in -- a passion that enables you
to read about it and to make sense out of it very quickly. To be able to organize
something that may be a little complicated and be able to break it down so
it's meaningful so you can explain it in simplified terms to people."
Goodman now works in an affluent, suburban school system. But he has also
worked in New York City schools that had many challenges. Adjusting to the
needs of your particular students is essential to being an effective teacher,
he says.
"I work in a place where the motivation is very high," says Goodman. "They
want to achieve Ivy League status, go to the top schools in the world, whereas
in other socioeconomic places it's just graduating high school that is the
motivator. My students are motivated by grades. In some schools I've worked
in they were motivated by food and candy, and school was a place for them
to feel safe at, because the streets weren't."
Meeting the needs of your students requires special insight and sensitivity.
"Every one of my four classes this year is different from the next," says
Goodman. "And within that body there are different students, and it's all
about motivation and caring about each of them. But you have 25 kids in the
class -- you work with them collectively but in essence you're teaching 25
individual lessons as well. So finding out what makes a kid tick, finding
out what motivates a child, I think is a real dilemma."
When you do manage to motivate and inspire your students, they remember
you. That's a very satisfying part of being a high school teacher.
"That's rewarding, when a kid comes up and says, 'Do you remember
me?'" says Munroe-Carpenter. "I think that's the most rewarding thing of all
-- the fact that these kids will come back and thank me, or they'll at least
remember me."