TEACHER INTEREVIEW
Montevideo High School
July 23 & 31, 1992
Q. Worklife influenced by principal?
A. Our principal encourages fair communication and ___________?
faculty meeting for each year you would specifically say to
make parent contact whenever possible. Does that answer
your question?
Q. Yeah, that's an example where the principal _____________
how you work, if you do it.
A. Yeah, he doesn't generally have anything to say about
__________ these teachers have a choice, _______________
doesn't interfere in the choice of curriculum
________________ teacher delivery. Of those things that you
mentioned, his emphasis would be parent communication and
maybe a little bit on student behavior and discipline,
_____________.
Q. How does he influence you in that area?
A. There's a "get tough" period every once in a while. Usually
the beginning of school and change of semester
_____________.
Q. And what's the expectation for the teacher?
A. The expectation is that school doesn't stop a week before
school's out. Teaching continues throughout the last day,
and he makes that expectation clear.
Q. Influenced by superintendent?
A. Directly or indirectly? I wonder if it would count that I
had his kids in my class?
Q. Oh, his kids in your class?
A. Three of them. That's an indirect influence and it caused
me to be very cognizant of my effect on the students in the
whole class; not just that class. It's always in the back
of your mind being that ________________
Q. It made you think twice?
A. No, it just made me make sure that I didn't do a poor job in
any certain area or that what I was doing wasn't
misinterpreted as poor teaching or as something unreliable,
unprofessional _______________.
Q. Can you think of an example that crossed your mind?
A. No. There's no instances, just one of those back of the
mind things. I don't think the superintendent has that much
direct influence on how you teach or what you teach. I'm
having trouble coming up with anything.
Q. O.K. Just leave it. You can think and eat at the same
time. The next area of influence is the school board.
Influence?
A. The school board took a look at class sections of biology
andthey had a policy based on parental complaint that
students should not be forced to dissect, actually
______________ it was a hope there would be no dissection at
all, animal rights.
Q. That's what the parents complaint _________________?
A. That's right. But the school board decided that if the
student didn't want to dissect, they should have an
alternate activity and that effected at least the biology
departments and science.
Q. _____________ teach biology?
A. No. ___________________ come close to the science
department. I teach business law and accounting
_______________.
Q. And so they did come with some alternative activities?
A. Yes. The result, scenario or whatever, human fetus
____________ couple of schools, and that's how the whole
thing got started. They were, they had to put it in the
back room _______________ couldn't display ________________,
and that was a school board decision.
Q. __________________ better now?
A. I think so.
Q. Influence by department chair?
A. That's pretty easy. The department chair would decide which
courses each person in the department would teach. A few
years ago, I was given a horrible assignment, teaching
assignment. ___________________________ out of the
____________ possible _______________. I complained that it
was unfair _________________________ I was teaching so many
different classes _____________________ people weren't
____________________________ so I complained to
________________ and got it modified and that created a
______________________ I was classified as an unfavorable
_______________________ working ____________________ for a
while.
Q. So I trust you attempted to make the change _____________
the department chair and that didn't work so you went to the
principal and that gotten straightened out?
A. Yes, it happened twice. One time he didn't straighten it
out and the other time he did.
Q. Influenced by state or federal programs?
A. Over in the Business Department when a vocation or education
was required to sort of track a student based on
competencies and so, which competencies were able to
realize, that caused major headaches.
Q. So the state sets out the competencies and you have to keep
track of each student?
A. At the end of the grading student we have to tell which
competencies each student
Q. As mandated by the state?
A. Based on federal money, therefore mandated by the state.
Q. So your district receives federal money and the state
monitors it?
A. Right. This created major _____________________
________________________________________________.
Q. Is there a place to resolve it, or is it a dead end?
A. Basically, wait for them to do something different to make
it easier for us. They've computerized the whole thing, but
still keeping track of maybe thirty competencies are
____________________________ every semester,
__________________ headache.
Q. Are teachers compliant, do you have no choice?
A. Our best bet is to teach everything to make sure that they
get exposed to everything, all their competencies, so we
don't have to say that one person did and one person didn't.
I would say that most teachers are pretty much compliant.
Q. Influenced by parents?
A. There's a monitoring system on parents, contact the teacher
or the counseling department, ______________ monitoring
every Friday _____________________ so I've done a few of
those, where you give a grade every Friday.
Q. An individual case?
A. ________________ student carries around a paper and have all
the teachers sign it with the current grade and their
behavior _______________________, and I've done that besides
the monitoring process through counseling, I've done that
for parents, otherwise.
Q. At some parent's request?
A. Yeah.
Q. Influenced by professional organization?
A. ___________________ go to meet, confer, bargain for raises.
I think most teachers go through areas of dissatisfaction
similar to that. That's about the only time the teacher
organization ____________________.
Q. _______________________ organization effect your worklife?
Influence your work life?
A. Yeah, I'd say it does. When they're ineffective, they very
much effect most people's work life.
Q. Can you tell me in what way?
A. It creates a sense of frustration that has to be overcome
and it could cause an attitude ______________________.
Q. When they're being effective, how do they influence your
life?
A. You mean in an effective way?
Q. Yes, or do you not feel they ______________________?
A. I don't think they influence ______________________ it would
be moderate compared to _________________________ the
dissatisfaction.
Q. Influenced by inservice training?
A. _____________________ in-service is approppriate for the
______________________ in education is appropriate
________________________ of an equality, I'd say there was a
positive influence in the classroom, especially if you
practice it.
Q. Can you think of a time?
A. Usually giving an in-service _______________________. Yeah,
there've been some inspirational speakers that had a
positive effect on myself and other teachers. Probably more
on a short-range area than long, where we would be able to
transfer that feeling and attitude to the classroom.
Q. Influenced by students?
A. Everyday, everyday basis. __________________ effect on a
teacher's work life.
Q. Can you describe ___________________
A. Both positive and negative? It's hard to think of just one.
Whenever a students meets with a personal success or
failure, that has an influence. I did, last semester or
last year for a while I did a daily journal activity with
quotes, quote of the day, and I'd gotten some, toward the
end of the year last year, I'd gotten positive messages from
the students that they'd had personal success in writing
their daily journal helped_____________________.
Q. Do you still do that?
A. No, I'm not doing it now. Negative side, I recently had a
student drop out of school. That had a negative effect on
me. ____________________ some certain while,
_____________________ in my classes.
Q. This had a negative effect on your attitude, or your
feeling?
A. Yes, whenever that happens _______________ negative effect,
______________________ juggle a wrap band.
Q. Have students ever caused you to change what you teach or
how you teach?
A. Throughout the years? You want one instance? Well, I just
showed a very long movie to _______________________ bored,
had to do with a supreme court case on segregation and I
________________________________ whether they wanted to see
it or not, under what circumstances, and they through a
discussion, told me how they wanted to see it, that they
wanted to see it ______________. I agreed to do a survey
afterward,__________________________. We could have stayed
with a _______________________________, _______________
________________________________________________________
Q. Influenced by colleagues?
A. There's been times where people that I teach with are in a
bad mood and causes friction, or I doubt if I cause any
friction, but it could be _________________________, so
there has been ___________________. One person in a
department of six, for example can cause enough friction for
everybody to be frustrated and have an effect on everybody.
I can think about a couple of specific incidences. Do you
want to hear about it?
They have a career ladder over there and I'm one of the
career ladder liaisons, a couple of years ago. One of the
teachers gave me a real poor evaluation while all the other
evaluations were very high, this caused
________________________________
____________________________________________________________
comments, _________________________ I got a copy of it.
They gave a copy to everybody and I knew who it was, so I
asked her what this was about. She had no response, so that
created a lot of friction, then she called and complained to
the head of the career ladder that I asked her about her
evaluation; that it was supposed to be
________________________, so that influenced my work for a
while.
Q. How does the career ladder deal with that?
A. I just talked it over with the head of the career ladder.
We agreed that she had lied, but it was unprofessional of me
to ask her about it. I should have just swallowed it.
Q. What are these career ladders based on? Like peer
evaluations?
A. That was just some feedback area.
Q. So that wouldn't hurt you?
A. No, it didn't hurt me because the supervisor didn't believe
it anyway. It was just a personal opinon. So it didn't
have anything to do with my career ladder ______________
Q. Because I wondered if one individual could put a halt on the
progress
A. No, if it was true, it might.
Q. Interaction with colleagues influence way you teach, etc.?
A. _________________ way I teach. If I see someone doing a
real good job somewhere, that'll influence me to try that
method. __________________________ not too long ago, left
our school, I was spending a lot of hours after school and
on the weekend ___________________, we influenced each
other_______________ a good thing for students
_________________________.
Q. Supporting each other; putting more time in to prepare?
A. Yes, exactly.
Q. Describe attempt to improve classroom curriculum etc. that
were thwarted?
A. Something that could be dangerous or detrimental. Just the
fact that it was a creative problem not ________________
process.
Q. Because it hasn't happened to you or anyone you know where
they've come up with a creative idea or innovative teaching
strategy, or content area that they were told they couldn't
do?
A. No.
Q. Failed attempt to influence you?
A. Department head tried to, I don't know how much of an
attempt it was to ______________________, it certainly
wasn't _____________________. It seemed to be a conflict
because the department head is a very straight forward,
lecture type and not creative necessarily,
_________________________________. Department heads are not
creative necessarily, and anything that looked different he
considered ____________ like a ___________________
discouraged attitude toward it, a negative attitude toward
it, traditional teaching.
Q. It sounds like there is more influence by department heads
than the principal.
A. As far as what you teach?
Q. What you do in your classes.
A. Influence is the right word. I would say demands, and
things like that __________________ more of an attitude.
Q. Influence by rules and policies that you resisted? How did
you work around it?
A. I'm sure there are. I'm trying to think. I can't think of
any.
Q. Talk about bureaucratic constrants?
A. I think they think they are necessary. They are for other
purposes other than quality of teaching, that they are
___________________ mandate or ____________________ bounds
or the public, or they're to satisfy something personal
________
______________________. People who complaint about
bureaucratic constraints ________________________.
Mandates, personal ideas, satisfying public ______________.
Q. What do you mean by personal _______________________?
A. Oh, if a principal had a certain idea about the way
something should be taught, he or she might create a
bureaucratic mechanism or the school board or
superintendent, might have a personal idea. I think that is
more applicable to school boards
Q. _______________________ ___________________?
A. Yeah, you want to know which ones? I think the biggest one
is the vocational education. Fulfilling the mandate of the
budget and creating a major headache for teachers who teach
the vocation classes ____________________________.
Q. You could probably assume that if a private school offered
vocational education they would be constrained by the same
mandates in (city name)?
A. Yes.
Q. Money?
A. To a lot of money ____________________.
Q. I want to go back to the one area where you said that the
department chairs decide what courses will be taught. Do
teachers have any input at all or is that just the
autocratic
A. It depends on the department head. Some of them are very
autocratic; some of them are very ___________________ and it
also depends on the size of the department. If you only had
three people, it is pretty clear ___________________. Some
department heads take no interest ___________________ the
teacher, even though you might have fifteen teaching in the
department. ____________________________, probably the best
situation is when the department head asks everybody if they
have a ______________________________,
Q. But that is not in your case?
A. Define a clear case _______________________. The case I was
telling you about, there is no input at all, it just came
down, and that has been slowly evolving toward a point where
it is more democratic and there are reasons for an
assignment.
Q. Is that based on the principals influence?
A. Partially, yeah, and the fact that I had fought with the
department head over a period of years, I guess.
Q. And the department head is getting tired of it?
A. Yeah, well maybe she is realizing that the
Q. Rank the four activities:
A. b = 1, a = 2, d = 3, c = 4.