Virtual School Teacher – English

>> As a teacher, you always have the option to major in education, which is helpful because then you have a lot of education theory to help you with regard to presenting that information in new and creative ways to the students. I was an English major, and I find that tremendously helpful in my job, because when the students are working on reading skills or literary analysis, I'm able to use the things that I learned at Rollins in the English Department to really help them. And while as an undergraduate, some of the literary analysis and the techniques, editing techniques definitely, that I used were advanced. What I can do is I can take that educational theory, bring those techniques down to a high school level, and then use them with the students. So actually, they're getting the benefit of those high school courses, that high school content, with someone who's very, very familiar with more advanced techniques. And so they actually, they get to move forward in a more real way than I would be able to move them in that content area had I not been an English major. Certainly, a little bit of education theory is not, is not harmful here. Although the classes in this particular, in what I do, my class is designed for me. I manage the class content, and I manage the students. I don't create contents. So as far as education theory, it's not absolutely essential. But definitely that open personality. Definitely that ability to make people feel comfortable. Really enjoying students. Somebody who doesn't like working with kids who have a hard time or kids who don't have a hard time, they know more than you do sometimes. If you, if you don't want to work with that type of person, then this is probably not the job for you. But if you seek out meeting new people, and you're excited by hearing of other people's successes and things like that. And you're pretty open because the one thing about teaching is that you're teaching kids who can ferret out a fake pretty quickly. So if you're a pretty authentic person, and you're okay with where you are and friendly, then you would do great here. If you're someone who really enjoys the creative part, creating lesson plans and organizing kids one on, in groups, and one-on-one, you may be a classroom teacher. Because as I said, I don't create curriculum. So that part, that whole creative element of being a teacher has been removed from my position. However, I am, if you really love to get to know the kids where they are. And we don't have one class of 30, we have 30 classes of 1. And so if you really want to work with a student one-on-one to get them from where they are to where they need to be, then virtual school is exactly the place that that kind of teacher would want to be. I think that having some classroom experience is probably helpful with regard to having more talking points at least than the interview. Florida virtual school is the largest virtual school in the entire country. I think it's also the oldest. They have right now 2,200 teachers. So becoming a virtual school teacher is a very real possibility when you're an educator. So, if you're in a state with a virtual school, then that's a great place to start. And making sure that you're certified, you're certified in all the areas that you want to teach. And yeah, I'm just looking for those interview dates and checking out what's available. Graduate school helped me to think on a higher level. I would say it's not, it's not necessary. But some of that historical background that I've been able to bring from my liberal studies has really helped. And it's, it's important to be able to set a historical context for students and British literature and American literature. Because sometimes out of context it doesn't resonate with the fullness that it would have had you known the context, so that I think was very helpful. But I would say that I could have done the job without graduate school had I not gone to graduate school. Because I don't think I would have missed that part necessarily, but I do enjoy the benefit of it now.