Can you tell us a bit about your history as an educator?
Absolutely! I studied to be a teacher in Brisbane, Australia, and have loved being an international teacher. I taught in Australia, the United States and Hong Kong prior to writing The New Teachers Kit. I've taught everything from Kindergarten, to High School Special Needs, to teaching other teachers how to be more effective in their practice. It's been a wonderful, varied career thus far!
If you could go back in time and give advice to yourself about teaching, what would it be?
Work smart, not hard! In fact, this is now on the logo for the New Teachers Kit, as it is such a passion of mine. I spent way too many hours in my first years of teaching making resources and learning 'new teacher' lessons, the hard way. I really should have learned from the experiences of the thousands of others who went before me, but I could not find any quality resources online for new teachers. So I decided, once I had 'found my feet', to put all my stuff online for other new teachers to use. I feel passionately that Educators who share their expertise create better outcomes for their students, and the New Teachers Kit was borne from this passion.
A common notion that society has on teachers is that they have a lot of vacation time. How do you spend your vacation time and is all the time off as good as people portray it to be?
Absolutely - I love that being a well resourced teacher allows me to invest my time off in the people and activities I love. I love to travel, scuba dive, do yoga, run and cook. I also enjoy web design, and have an interest in photography.
How do you feel technology has impacted education today?
We are so fortunate in this day and age as teachers to have technology available to us, as it enables us to work together so much better. There are some fabulous resources online that make teaching so much easier than it must have been years ago. I love that we are part of one worldwide community, connected by the Web, and that we can work together, as a result of technology.
Teaching is... enjoyable, challenging, interesting, collaborative, dynamic, and most of all, rewarding.
0 comments:
Post a Comment