UTEC Bio
Year: Junior
Cohort: 2027
Credential: Multiple Subject
Major: Psychology
Program: 4+1 Dual Degree
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Interview
Question: What inspired you to become a teacher?
Greer: I am a student with learning disabilities, and all throughout kindergarten to sixth or seventh grade, I never really felt as though I ever liked school. I never had a chance to love school. I had amazing teachers that did everything they could for me, but it was still not enough. I went to a private school and they didn’t really have the testing equipment or anything to diagnose me or do anything of that sort. When I got to middle school things really got hard. They decided to test me, and they had more resources in the middle school than the elementary school. They learned that I have learning differences. I’ve learning disabilities in math and reading, and then I have ADHD. So in sixth grade I learned that and it changed my whole view of school. It wasn’t my fault that I was struggling. I always thought it was my fault, that I never understood anything. When I was in kindergarten, I’d have panic attacks during math. I would break out in hives because I was so stressed and because I couldn’t figure out how to add and do simple things. It was just, you learn this way or you don’t learn at all.
So when I got to middle school, it finally clicked that I’m different. This was not the environment where I can learn best. So I was pulled out of school and went to a special education school in eighth grade, and my whole view of school changed. I fell in love with school. And for the first time in my entire life, I was like, I actually understand what’s happening and I don’t have to study for a test because I know what’s going on. I just instantly fell in love with school, and I made friends and felt like I could be myself. I went to high school at that same school.
I was also a teaching assistant for a while to elementary kids. One day someone said to me, you should be a teacher. And I thought about it. I thought, I do really like kids, and I do really like school. I want to make sure that no kid, especially at a young age, feels as though they’re stupid or that they are not worthy of education, because that’s how I felt and it was awful. So I want to make sure that I can give every student the opportunity to fall in love with school, just like I did.
Question: When you have your own class, what will some of your passions or priorities be? What do you want to make sure students experience in your class?
Greer: I always want to prioritize the human being in my teaching practices because it felt as though when I was going through these things, all throughout elementary school, it was like, you have to get your work done no matter what. It was never, are you okay? Do you need some time to take away from work? It felt like I was being pushed into work. So I want to prioritize my students’ well-being over them getting work done. Looking back I think, oh, maybe if I was prioritized as a person first, I would not have a hard time taking time for myself later in life. I’m just now learning about self-care and that type of thing. So I definitely want to make sure that students can have that self-care aspect of things, as well as being able to do work in a timely manner, of course. For example, when I was doing field work, there was a student who didn’t really want to do work or didn’t really want to go out to recess. So we just stayed in the classroom and read a book together.
So I want to make sure that students get to do what they feel comfortable doing. I often felt really uncomfortable in the school setting, especially being away from my mom. It felt like I was being trapped into doing work all day. I want my classroom to be a safe place for students. Yes, a place of learning, but a safe place first, where they can come and they can feel. They can express their emotions when they need to, and they can take a moment to do whatever they need to do. Because I oftentimes felt like I had to hold in my feelings. And that’s not healthy. I want to make sure that students are able to express what they’re feeling and express their concerns, and to question why they’re doing certain things. If they’re doing a worksheet, they could ask, why are we doing this? Great question. We’re doing this because of this, this and this. Being able to ask all the questions because that’s a great part of learning.
Question: What effect has your psychology major had on your teaching?
Greer: I definitely think that psychology plays a lot into teaching, because my view of teaching is the human-first aspect. They’re a child first and a student second. It’s very cool to learn about what’s going on in the brain, especially when I took child development. It was really helpful to learn about what is actually going on emotionally in their brain at certain levels of a kid’s developmental journey. I learned about kindergarten and how their brains are developing and how their emotions are developing and how they’re exploring new emotions and how they’re kind of being introduced to a lot of things. That aspect of psychology has really helped me to understand their brain is still very much developing—like we all are, but they’re a little bit newer than we are. They’re not necessarily exposed to everything. When they encounter something new that they have a quote unquote bad reaction to or start crying, that’s not necessarily a bad reaction. You tell them, it’s okay to cry, but we’re still going to do the activity and we’re still going to learn; we’re going to do it slowly and we’re going to introduce it slowly. Because it can be really overwhelming learning new stuff in one day.
Question: In terms of your teaching classes, which one did you get a lot of or find yourself using in the classroom?
Greer: I really loved the Education of Exceptional Children class. It was my favorite class, because I realized I know all this stuff. I know what an IEP is. The class helped me to know the other side of it, because I’ve been on the other side as a student. Now seeing the teacher’s point of view, I was like, okay, that makes sense. I was able to take my own experiences and bring that into the classroom. I feel like it can be really useful to be able to do that, because I think experiences are amazing if you can bring them into the job. I think experiences are how we learn. If I have a bad experience with something, then as a teacher, I can kind of change that narrative. I can change it to be a positive experience. I can change the way it can be perceived.
I definitely used what I learned in that classroom about students who might not be diagnosed or might need a little bit of extra time, or a different set of directions or something along those lines that I was able to apply to fieldwork later. In fieldwork, sometimes there were students who were struggling a little bit. The teacher would have me take them and do an activity together, or make a game out of it. During the pandemic, I tutored an elementary special education kid. He didn’t know his ABCs and he was in fifth grade. He really loved rap music, so I would suggest we play songs but he was going to have to learn his ABC’s. So I would play the instrumental of his favorite songs and I would rap the ABC’s over it, and we would do it together. I would present a YouTube video and he would be able to pick the song. I’d say, okay, but it has to be instrumental and it can’t have any bad words in it. So we would play the instrumental and then sing the ABCs.
Question: What kind of things do you like to do outside of teaching and working with kids?
Greer: I really like to do art. I love to crochet and I love to paint. I paint all the time during the summer, usually acrylic on canvas. I love dogs so much. I have two dogs at home in LA and I miss them desperately. They make the world so much better. I have a labradoodle, Lucy, who I’ve raised since she was ten weeks old. She’s my girl. She’s my ride or die. I found Q, my other dog, as a stray. She is a German shepherd, Siberian husky mix. It was peak pandemic when I found her. I spent all day outside with her and fed her. I convinced my parents to take her to the vet. She’s such a sweet dog. She’s amazing.
