TEACHER INTERVIEW

Verde Valley Country Day School
May  29, 1992

 
Q.   How long have you been at this school:

A.   I've been here eight years.

Q.   And how long have you been teaching?

A.   This is my 16th year.

Q.   Influenced by the head of school?

A.   Yeah, I would say probably my first year here I had a really
  difficult time  working with students who very much admired
  and enjoyed the previous drama teacher and as first year work
  often goes, it's kind of difficult to decide what is
  appropriate in a way of discipline, what's appropriate in the
  way of materials to teach that you really don't know what has
  been taught previously, and I became rather discouraged and
  went in and talked with our head and he said, "You know, one
  of the things that you probably need to do is to kind of
  lighten up a little bit.  Your expectations are very high.
  Even though we are a college prep school students are taking
  drama as more of a release and I think you need to look at it
  that way and of course, there's some important material that
  you need to cover but maybe you need to cover it in a
  different light and maybe teaching through the materials,
  through the sureness that you teach, and some of the history
  or some of the other information that you want to get students
  involved in and not spend too much time book learning because
  they're doing so much of that in all their other classes" and
  you know, it really, I realized also from talking with other
  teachers that they study a lot about Shakespeare in the
  English classes, they read Shakespeare.  They get a lot of
  background information that I really didn't have to cover and
  feel stressed at trying to cover.  I really needed to focus
  more on getting students up and getting them involved with
  characterization and getting them to work on self-confidence
  and getting them to work as a pertinent group and there are
  areas that I really felt that my focus needed to be on and I
  think when I finally came to that realization, my job became
  a lot easier -------------------- that is important to me.

 
Q.   Influenced by the Board of Trustees?

 
A.   Well, I've sort of gone in different directions and I was
  thinking seriously about changing schools about 2 years ago
  and kind of wavering back and forth as to whether I wanted to
  get into doing more administrative work.  My goal was kind of
  then in that direction and I was teaching part time up until
  two years ago and then I went to our head who went to the
  Board and I requested that I be put on full time and that I
  was really interested in getting into doing some
  administrative work and they approved that, so now I'm
  involved with coordinating our, we have an exchange program
  with a school in Kiev, Ukraine, and I totally coordinate that
  at this point and I'm going to be, next year I'm going to be
  into a position as Dean of Students so I'll be teaching part
  time and doing the Dean's assistant part time and,

 
Q.   Is this a new position?

 
A.   This is a new position that they created for me.  Yes we had
  a 5 year plan that we worked on this year.  We had gotten the
  school involved and the community involved and out of that,
  out of the meetings that we had here they determined there was
  a need and it was something I'd always wanted to do.  I'm
  student council advisor and I've helped with our career day
  and I've help with, well I'm National Honor Society advisor
  where I've been involved in a lot of administrative work and
  be involved with a lot of student activities to begin with and
  this sort of all fell under one title and it seemed like a
  natural position.  So, I'll be doing that next year.  I'm
  also, I've been doing the athletic director's position for the
  last two years which is also an administrative position.

 
Q.   Do you have an administrative background?

 
A.   No, I don't and that's one of the things that I really
  appreciate on having the advantage to do in a private school.
  I don't know that anybody would have even looked at me in a
  public school without that background and I guess people just
  have the confidence in me from the work that I've done here to
  give me more and more work to do.  And it's seemed to work out
  and now I'm really thinking, I have about 35 units, graduate
  units, but I don't have my master's at this point and I'm
  trying to decide now whether I want to go back and finish it
  in administration or whether I want to get a master's in
  drama.

 
Q.   Is that where your 35 units are?

 
A.   Actually it's a mixture.  I have some in education, I have
  some in counseling and I have some in drama.

 
Q.   Influenced by a department chair?

 
A.   Yah, __________ something that I was interested in doing and
  went to her to talk about and that was trying to develop and
  interdisciplinary program within the arts and I, we both went
  to a workshop in Flagstaff, I think it was about 3 summers ago
  and we both got really excited about trying to work out a
  program and through her help and through the coordination of
  the music teacher also and myself, we developed a program that
  revolves around different cultures and we did it for two years
  in a row and then we decided there were certain things in each
  of our disciplines that we felt we needed to focus on that
  maybe we couldn't concentrate on as much when we were working
  together so we divided up the program now so that we do it
  every other year and we will team teach for one year and the
  team teaching will be around what ever culture we decide we
  want to work on and then the second year we'll each take the
  different classes individually and work on basic skills.  I'm
  really excited, we just really had a ball working together.
  We've accomplished so much and I've learned so much about the
  other disciplines.  It's been very, very interesting for me.
  I feel like it's been a real growing experience for myself.

 
Q.   Influenced by state or federal program or regulations?

 
A.   Well, I've had the opportunity, I've been on the board of the
  (state name) Theatre Educators Association and had the opportunity
  to work on the statewide curriculum and this also took place
  about six or seven years ago.  It might even be longer than
  that and I've watched what has happened to the original
  curriculum that we worked on developing and I think become a
  reality and also, the fact that now the Fine Arts, you know is
  becoming a requirement in the schools - having one year of
  Fine Arts or in the public schools, yah and I think that's
  through the work of the group that I originally started.

 
Q.   Does that effect you here at all?

 
A.   That doesn't effect here because we already, we've had that
  requirement here for as long as I've been here.  I don't know
  how far back it goes but students have to take at least one
  year of Fine Arts as a requirement in high school and they all
  have Fine Arts starting from elementary on up through 8th
  grade as a requirement.

 
Q.   Does the state curriculum effect you at all?

 
A.   Well, I think it's more clearly defined the direction that we
  can go and we don't necessarily have to go in but it, I think
  it makes what we do maybe a little bit more visible and a
  little bit more real to administrators when they see it in the
  form of the curriculum where they can go through and I think
  read and see exactly what we are working towards and what our
  goals are and, you know, what we really are teaching.

 
Q.   So in this school you follow that state curriculum?

 
A.   I don't say I follow it to a T but I do a lot of what is in
  there.  I've always done, you know, and since I was one of the
  people that helped create it, I mean much of my work is
  already in there but, yah, it gives us some guidelines to go
  by and --

 
Q.   But you're not required?

 
A.   We're not required, no.  We actually can come up with our own
  curriculum.

 
Q.   Are you aware of how other departments deal with state
  curriculum guides?  Do they look at them?  Do they read them?

 
A.   I assume that they do.  I'm not fully aware of what the other
  schools are doing.

 
Q.   I mean the other departments.

 
A.   Yes, I know they all do.  We actually had to sit down and
  develop our own curriculums last year because we went through,
  our school's North Central evaluation and private school
  evaluation this year, so

 
Q.   Do you use the state curriculum as a guide?

 
A.   I do, yah, and I think most of the other departments do as
  well.

 
Q.   Influenced by legal or judicial judgments?

 
A.   Well, when you deal with materials that I deal with, when
  you're dealing with plays and you've gotten royalties, you
  know, you have all of those things to consider.  Yah, I am
  influenced to a certain extent because I know that it's
  important to follow the rules as far as notifying the
  publishers when I'm doing a show and paying them royalty fees.
  All those things are certainly there for us to follow and
  copyright laws and so forth.  So it certainly does influence
  me to a certain extent.

 
Q.   Influenced by parents?

 
A.   My work life to a great extent has been very positive, one of
  things that I love about teaching at this school is the
  support that I have from parents and it's, I just received a
  note from a parent yesterday about their child having been in
  a production last week and how much the child enjoyed the
  production and they enjoyed it, and I receive notes like that
  every once in a while and that really, you know, it just means
  so much to me to get that kind of support and also to have the
  support of the parents at the productions.  At the school that
  I, in the public school that I taught in, it was a different
  socio-economic group and there was not a lot of support, as a
  matter of fact there was more support the opposite way to draw
  the kids away from the arts because the parents did not feel
  they were anything that were, anything that supported what the
  families wanted the kids to do.  They were more into having
  the kids try and go out and get a job and it was very
  difficult to get the parent to the performances and to get the
  kids to the practices, rehearsals and it was really
  discouraging to me but here, I feel like parents are very
  supportive.  I had one incident I can think back to, not here
  but in my public school teaching where I had a parent call and
  complain because I was talking about a movie they didn't
  approve of and I, you know I am very aware of censorship and
  what's appropriate for high school and for middle school and
  elementary and I have been really pleased with the open
  mindedness of the students and the parents and the faculty
  here and I don't really feel like I have to censor most of the
  work that we do.

 
Q.   Influenced by professional organization?

 
A.   Well, I belong to the Thespians and several theater education
  associations and I did go to a natural conference two years
  ago and plan on going again this year and I just got a world
  of knowledge in the two or three days I was there.  The
  workshops were just phenomenal and being able to talk with
  other teachers and compare notes and everybody was really
  willing to exchange ideas and I just felt a real closeness to
  people that I never knew before in a very short period of time
  and I think that is one of the nice things that networking
  that goes on is one of the really nice things about the
  organizations that we have.

 
Q.   Is the school able to give you financial support?

 
A.   Yah, they have.  They have paid for me to go to several
  workshops just about every summer for the last four or five
  years I've attend a workshop or a conference.

 
Q.   Influenced by in-service training?

 
A.   Well, I think I'd like to see more in-service training done.
  That's one of things that I've been pushing for.  We did have
  one two summers ago that was done by a psychologist and it
  really helped us focus on dealing with middle school students
  and what motivates then and discipline and it helped us to
  really develop a whole new discipline policy for the middle
  school.  That, in some case was successful and in others, you
  know, need some work and I think we're going to rework some it
  this year, but I think that to me was kind of an eye opener
  and really I think helped the whole faculty when we were very
  frustrated.

 
Q.   Influenced by students?

 
A.   Yah, this year in particular, I have a senior class that has
  really been very influential.  I have had some students who
  have had some goals and it kind of pushed me, I think, to
  expand my own horizons and there was a show that we did this
  year that I had read a couple of years ago and kind of set it
  aside thinking that technically it was too difficult to do and
  I really felt like, I don't know, I didn't really think I had
  the students that could carry the roles and one of my students
  at the beginning of the year came in and said, "You know, I
  read this play and I really would like to do it."  I said, "Oh
  yah, I know that play.  I read it a couple of years ago and
  kind of set it aside."  And he said, "I really think we can do
  it."  And I said, "Well let me read it again and let's talk
  about it."  So I read it again and I thought, well, maybe this
  group could do it so we arrange the script, some reading
  copies, and we read it in class and the kids got real excited
  about it, they really wanted to do it, so I thought if they're
  that excited about it, you know, then it's really something we
  should look into and try to do, so we did.  And I think it was
  one of the most successful productions ever done here and it
  was because of some students who really dedicated a lot of
  time at the very end of the year when usually the enthusiasm
  is very low and set their mind to doing this because they
  really wanted to do the production, and I had one student who
  was just phenomenal with sets and helped me in getting the set
  together and figuring out some technical problems that we
  needed to work on and it was totally the greatest satisfaction
  that I've had in a production in all 16 years that I was
  directing.  So, had the students not committed to that at the
  beginning of the year and not encouraged me, I don't know that
  I would have ever picked up the script again.

 
Q.   Influenced by colleagues?

 
A.   Well, I think some of the things that I really like about
  teaching here is the great support you have and when I do a
  production I have a lot of teachers there and I get a lot of
  positive feed back and encouragement and I think that
  encourages me to go on, too.  I didn't have the same feeling
  back in the first position that I taught in.  There seemed to
  be a lot of bickering and, you know, people didn't want to
  share and there was not the exchange of ideas and

 
Q.   Do you know why?

 
A.   I don't know why.  It may just have been the personality of
  the people involved.  To some extent, you know, people felt
  that if they had an idea they should have credit for it and
  they didn't feel that they needed to share it with other
  people, but I think basically it was personalities, I don't
  know.  It just seems that this faculty is basically so easy to
  get along with and very supportive and very open to new ideas,
  and that says, that's made my job a lot easier.

 
Q.   Influenced by North Central or the Association of Independent
  Schools?

 
A.   Well, this year I was very -----------------------.  I was
  rather a tense beginning because we had so much work to do for
  preparing for the evaluation this year.  A lot of paper work
  to do and, you never know, you hope that what you're doing is
  the right thing and actually, I had the advantage of sitting,
  going through a session preparing interviews for private
  school evaluations so that eventually hopefully I will be on
  an evaluation team but I've not done that, so it's kind of
  interesting to see what the evaluators were looking for before
  they were actually here.  I got a little bit of insight into
  that, but besides their influence I don't think I'd change
  anything.  What I do enjoy about the process is that they make
  suggestions and usually their suggestions are things that we
  already know we need to work on or would like to see changed,
  and hopefully by having that down in writing maybe eventually
  some of these changes will take place.  I certainly hope so.
  Scheduling has always been a problem.  I get very frustrated
  with the class periods.  I would like to have two hour class
  period for my advanced class, even for my elementary classes.
  I feel like we just get going and the bell rings, you know,
  and when you're working on a full length play, I mean, you
  can't do that in a 50 minute period, or whatever.  You just
  need more time and that's one of the things that they have
  suggested also looking at a schedule that would accommodate
  longer periods.

 
Q.   How are the decisions of scheduling made?

 
A.   Well, basically WWW, the head, does the
  scheduling and she has tried to accommodate us but it's so
  difficult because we have so few teachers and most of the
  classes are offered once during the day, trying to fit all of
  these classes in during the 7 period day is just a nightmare
  and then if you're expanding these classes into a double
  period you're also limiting the choices of what periods you
  can offer what classes, so it's just part of the difficulty of
  the size of the school and the number of faculty, I think.

 
Q.   Creative attempt that was thwarted?

 
A.   I can't think, I had a student teacher this year who was
  having some difficulty getting along with students and we were
  trying to work on writing a play and because of some
  discipline problems that we were having I was getting some
  complaints from parents about maybe expecting too much of the
  students and we didn't, I didn't change, I ended up stepping
  in taking over the assignment and changing the process just a
  little bit and by breaking it down into smaller segments that
  the students had an easier time with we actually got through
  the project and I thought it really turned out to be quite
  successful, but I think sometimes you need to, when you're
  trying something new, you need to think about how much the
  students can take at any particular time and, you know, expect
  too much again.  It's surprising how frustrated the kids get
  and how much of this they share with their parents, you know,
  and I really appreciate getting feedback from parents.  I like
  to know, you know, what's going on.

 
Q.   Failed attempt to influence you?

 
A.   I tried to do a show a couple of years ago, that was something
  I really wanted to do and I tried to influence the students
  into trying to be enthusiastic about the show and they just
  never could get it together so in the end we ended up canning
  the show, but out of that they decided within about two weeks
  time before a performance that we were supposed to do that
  they would get together some scenes and do them instead of
  doing the play that I wanted them to do and actually, they
  were very, very happy at that point.  It was difficult because
  I really felt let-down and I was really disappointed that they
  didn't want to do this show but they really took on the new
  project and got their scenes together amazingly fast and
  really had, I think in the end, a performance they enjoyed
  doing much more and I think it's really important to get
  students involved with what you do and have them buy-in as we
  say into what's happening because if you try to influence them
  and it's something they're really adamant about not doing, I
  think in the end you're going to be butting heads and neither
  one of you are going to be happy.

 
Q.   Have there been any rules, regulations or policies out of the
  administration of the school that you've resisted and worked
  around?

 
A.   Well, I'm sure -------------- I can't think of anything off
  hand.  We don't have too many rules around here.  Most of the
  rules are pretty sensible rules, so it's not anything.  I'm a
  terrible person with deadlines because I'm so stressed with
  meeting deadlines within my own performance area that
  deadlines for paperwork and all these other things that you
  must do when you're teaching I find rather stressful, but you
  know, in the end I end up doing them, so I don't think I cause
  too many problems.

 
Q.   Talk about bureaucratic constraints on teachers?

 
A.   Well, you know I don't feel, maybe because I've kind of ------
  ----- them out and am considered part of the administration at
  this point, maybe I don't feel that bureaucracy quite as much
  as some of the other teachers do, but I don't feel, the
  channels here are easy to get through.  People are willing to
  listen, I don't feel like, I don't know.  I just don't feel
  that that's a problem here.  Maybe you could define what
  you're thinking about a little bit more.

 
Q.   I want to know what you think that means.

 
A.   Well, I don't feel that there are steps that you need to take.
  I think if you have a problem and you go to the person that
  you have the problem with, that you can solve it.  I don't
  feel that there's a lot of back-biting, you know, like there's
  a lot of panels you have to go through to get things
  accomplished here.  I just think that the process is just so
  much more simplified than it would be in the public schools.
  You know, you don't have a superintendent that you have to go
  through to make major changes, you're head and you're
  assistant are right there.  They're available -- I just never
  felt like there was a lot of paperwork that you have to do
  really to get something changes, even the business office is
  so easy to work with and those are really, you know, and I can
  think back to the public school system and all the steps and
  the bureaucracy that you had to go through to get things
  changed.  I just don't feel that at all here.  I think that
  people are really listen here and try new things.

 
 
Q.   The last question.  Rank activities.

 
A.   I feel that I have control over all of these.  A=1, B=2, D=3,
  C=4.

 
 
Q.   Do you think some of the freedom that you have has to do with
  the discipline that you teach because it doesn't relate to
  kids getting into college or getting college credit?  Do you
  think there are other pressures on other disciplines?

 
A.   Well, I feel a certain amount of pressure in preparing the
  kids because I do have kids who go on in the arts in college
  and there are some basic knowledge and skills that I feel they
  need to have, so

 
Q.   The parents have that expectation also?

 
A.   I think they do, yah, I really do.  It isn't all fun and
  games.  There is a lot that is learned, technically.  You
  know, there is a skill in getting up and performing and I work
  on those skills.

 
Q.   I just wondered if you have any different feeling because of
  your disciplines.