A Day In The Life Of A Teacher

Teachers work just as hard or harder than their students. So I wanted to dive into what it’s like for a teacher to be a teacher! I had so many questions I wanted to ask so I figured I’d interview one of my teachers, Señor Davis who is a Spanish teacher at Fruita Monument High School.

I first asked him, “what’s one thing you do to prepare yourself for the day in the morning?”  “I get dressed in teacher clothes,” Davis said.

When do you prepare for your class everyday? I asked this because as a student I’ve always wondered how a teacher goes about preparation and if it’s hard for them. “As far as daily preparation, I try to get my preparation done the day before but if not I have a wonderful first hour planning period which saves me a lot of time.” Teachers seem to have a lot on their hands, like Davis who uses all the time he can get to do his preparation.

One of my favorite questions to ask was “do you have to follow a strict curriculum or can you be creative with it?” “I can be creative with it. We have no curriculum given to us from the district or the school or Colorado or anyone and so we use these novels and we’ve pulled out the vocab and the grammar and the language and the whole entire curriculum we’ve created is pure creativity.” I find it so interesting that some teachers, like math teachers have to follow a curriculum but other teachers like Mr.Davis can teach his topic and its “pure creativity” as he put it. I never realized how hard it must be to create your own curriculum.

“What is the best part of your day?” I asked, expecting him to say his favorite part of the day is going home but got a much better response.“Oh golly my favorite part of the day is probably, oh I don’t know,” class interrupts saying “seventh hour, fourth hour!” Davis starts speaking again as he laughs at his students “you don’t want to get stuck in that rut where you’re like working for the weekend or wait till lunch or something…you try to enjoy every moment whether it’s working or playing or relaxing- you’re trying to enjoy it. It’s every moment.”

What type of self care do you do to make your life less stressful? “I try to get enough sleep every night. That’s actually a huge thing for me. If I don’t get enough sleep Im terrible at everything.” I definitely could relate to Davis on that one.

Why did you become a teacher? “Because kids are a lot easier to get along with than adults and that’s probably by far the number one reason. But there’s a lot of other good things about it too. I get to spend a lot of time with my family.”

As a teacher, what are your goals to help your students improve? “Well mostly I just wish my students would believe it’s possible to become fluent and actually use Spanish in their lives. I think most of them are kind of handcuffed by their own ideas of how far they can get with the language. Which I think most of them are just doing it for college or just trying to get their three years over and they don’t understand how valuable and possible it is for them no matter what career they choose. They’re more marketable if they can speak Spanish.” I definitely took in consideration what Davis said and never put it the way he did. He definitely inspired me to continue Spanish even when I’m out of high school. He also made me realize how much teachers care about our education, and they really do want us to do well because they know what they’re teaching us is valuable.

What’s the hardest part of your job on a daily basis? “Getting up in the morning.” Davis’s class interrupts laughing at his response, as we all can agree getting up in the morning is very hard for all of us. “I’m not a morning person. That is one thing about teaching, it starts early, it sucks but you gotta do it.”

What’s it like having summers off? “Beautiful…” I then ask if he works in the summers. “My summers are different every year. But I’ve worked, I’ve played, I’ve done lots of different things. I take these trips with students. Like we’re going to Peru for two weeks this June. I coach tennis. I spend lots of time with my family though.”

How do you handle problem students? “I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem student,” I further ask him if he did, what would he do. “I mean each situation is so unique. Obviously you would try to solve it with the student. I mean like I said before I don’t really like dealing with adults and if I had to get parents involved it wouldn’t be any fun for me either.”

How do you deal with students falling behind in class? “As you can see, we’ve got a full class for CAT. So I guess that’s how were dealing with it these days. This is a tough subject to fall behind in, we keep building and building. It’s not like read chapter one, forget it and move on. The best way to deal with it is to not let them fall behind in the first place.” I love that Davis tries to work with his students and helps them as much as he can. When I was trying to find a time to interview him, it actually took a couple days to get through to him because he was so busy helping his students improve. He really was dedicated to helping all of his students, and make time for me.

This interview has opened my eyes to how hard our teachers work, and they deserve more a credit than we give them. I’m very thankful Señor Davis took ten minutes out of his day for me to share with you what a day in the life of a teacher is really like. So thank you to all teachers out there who work so hard for their students.