History Teacher Interview

This interview was with a high school History teacher named Lisa Voss who has been teaching for 3 years at the Antelope High School. Lisa Voss has great personality and very smart. She cares for her students and wants them to progress in their lives. She takes her classes very seriously. She is engaged with various community organizations in the greater Sacramento area. Voss told me that she is always there for her students to help them out with any questions they have. She loves teaching American History and emphasized that we can learn a lot from it. She obtained her bachelor degree from the San Jose State University. She wanted to pursue a degree in engineering but after taking couple of courses in engineering field, she realized that engineering

She stated in order to provide the quality education, teachers need to create unbiased curriculum for their classes. She believes every student should be treated equally and respectfully. She stated teachers should not treat one student or group of students different from the rest of students. One of her other personal education philosophy is to be fair with students and eradicate stereotypes in her classroom. For examples, sometimes she choose the groups of students who will work on a project together, and this group of students will be mixture of students with different ethnicity and race. She said, “it is true that bias still exist in the classrooms even after 50+ years of civil rights movements; I try my best to eliminate bias and stereotype in my classrooms.” She emphasized that stereotype and bias in class deteriorate learning and degrade student's learning. Voss views public education as social development of her students. She stressed that we need to adopt the multicultural learning method because America is a melting pot where we have people from all kind of backgrounds. She stated school school objectives should embrace

She said,”common core is a great measuring tool of students' success and I am looking forward to all the challenges it will bring.” She believes common core will be great tool to scale education all across America. She acknowledged that even with common core, teachers will set their own curriculum but now they will be measured across nation. She knows common core will not set curriculum for teachers but it will set goals for k-12 classes. She emphasized that teachers need to start adapting to the plan now and experiment with new lessons in their classrooms. Voss likes the idea how students will be engaged with each others instead of just sitting on their desks listening to teachers. She knows common core will serve as a education benchmark for students' success. Voss recognizes the need for better preparation of students heading to college or university. She acknowledged that it is to soon to see the outcomes of the common core, and we should wait and see the long term benefits it will provide to students. She wants her students to compete, and she believes common core will do just that. She recognizes the challenges the common core will bring but she stated she will be ready to face the challenges. Voss knows education in California is so behind as compared to other states, and she believes common core will set good standards to reduce the gap. Voss is ready for the common core in California and new standards it