Teacher Highlight: Jessika Collins

Speaker: Jessika Collins, Middle School Science Teacher, Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp

Jessika Collins: My experience becoming a teacher through iteach was a really good one. I'm a mother of two small children and I just knew that um, going in person in classes was not going to be an option for me and things get so busy and um with the kids routine, it's just pretty, pretty much impossible to leave them for long periods of time and to try to do homework and things like that. So, since the iteach program is completely online, I was able to take classes whenever I needed. And um, if I had to put something on pause for a week or two, that was totally fine. I could just come back to it and pick up whenever I needed. Um, if I needed to refresh stuff, things from, from the beginning were always available for me to go back and like refresh. Um So being able to go at my own pace and work at it, like really late at night after the kids are already in bed was something that was definitely super important to me to be able to spend the most amount of time with my family and not um have this something that like, put, put my life on hold. Um iteach was there for me when I needed it and then when I didn't, there was no pressure, there was no deadlines. so that was something that was totally incredible that other programs don't have. Um my observation teacher and, and all of the teachers actually, they were super helpful. They were always very kind and very responsive if I had any questions. Um, my observation teacher even talked on the phone for like 20 minutes one night. Um, I really got to know him pretty well, so I am really glad that, um, that iteach a poise, the teachers that they do because they are very accepting and very motivating as well. And they never made me feel any type of way from for having to put stuff on pause. Or if I turn something in like weeks after I turned in the previous assignment, they were still very responsive and still there for me.

Jessika Collins: It's really hard for me to pick just three words to describe iteach. I mean, it was so many things to me. Um And it helped me progress my career um in the way that I needed to, to go. Um I would say that iteach is very like succinct, like it really gets to the point of exactly what you need. Um right away very first modules like your first day, how you're gonna prepare for class and um meeting your students and things like that. I'm really looking forward to being able to use that next year um for my first actual first day as a teacher. And um another word I'd probably use is um like well paced. Um the content is challenging, but it also since you're able to go at your own pace, like you can get as deep as you need. Um and take as long as you need to actually really truly understand a concept. And almost every module that you have has multiple links, multiple sources, videos on the team teaching channel. Um So I would say that um it's also like very uh diversified learning for people who learn different ways. Um, there's readings, there's um, videos, there's audios, there's pictures and diagrams and things like that. So, I mean, it's really hard to describe it in just three words. Um It was a really, really good experience for me overall.

Jessika Collins: Yeah, I think iteach really prepares you to be in the classroom. I really loved how they had just, just a module on the first day. There's a lot of anxiety and just complications around being like a transition to a teacher. Um You haven't been in the classroom for such a long time and it's hard to remember like what the classroom culture was like in your favorite classes. Um Like things like what you did on the first day of school because it's such like, it goes by so fast. Um So I'm really looking forward to using that module next year and being able to actually like set a classroom culture. That's not something that I got to do this year with teaching because I started so late in the year, there was already kind of a culture established in the classroom from the um long term sub that had been in that room. And so it's kind of hard to like, break all those habits and like, you know, like, yes, that's how the previous teacher did things, but this is how I'm doing things I came into a room where these students had had three teachers already that year. So, um, I was doing a lot of like fixing rather than setting the, setting the process up. So I'm really looking forward to using that first day of school module, like to its full list. And, um, one of the assignments that we had to do was to figure out, um, like our policies. Like, what are we going to do with late work? How are we going to communicate with parents? What's our uh behavioral management style? And I really appreciated that because once I actually got in the classroom, there were so many conflicting things from the other teachers that were trying to help me like, oh, we should use a restorative practice for this or we should just put them in after school detention. And um everybody has a different style of teaching. And so I felt like iteach, did a really good job of like presenting like these are the different styles. Now you choose, pick and choose what is going to work for you and work for your classroom and your personality. Another thing that I think it really prepared me for was um using standards for my teaching. Unfortunately, standards are just like a part of a part of the teaching world. And um for most jobs you're gonna go in and the state is gonna tell you, you need to teach this, this and yet this by the end of the year state testing. Um and that's not something that I was really expecting going into it. Um, so with my science background, I mean, there were so many things that I, I was ready to teach and luckily for one of my classes I did get to teach exactly what my degree was in for like, three or four months just because that was the standard. But, um, that wasn't something that I had been prepared for that. I don't think other transition teachers would be prepared for. So, like for every assignment that you do and iteach, they ask you to find the standard that you're teaching from and to create the assignment based on the standard and then your instructor will even give you feedback. Like, oh, this didn't really quite match the language of the standard that you gave. Like this says, identify and you categorized. Um So like little small things like that, um that you wouldn't necessarily look that deep into if you were a transition to teaching. Um That's something that your instructors are gonna point out to you and help guide you to figuring out like, oh, this activity doesn't actually match the standard. It's a great activity, but it's not necessarily what the standard is asking for the students to do. So you just kind of have to um you just kind of have to learn that along the way and instead of being thrown in a classroom and like not knowing what to do, iteach really tells you like step by step. Like this is what you need to do to make an assessment, this is what you need to do to make a lesson. Um And I found that just like incredibly helpful beyond anything that I, I have done so far.

Jessika Collins: That's a really hard one, I guess. Um, like my favorite, like thing, like, favorite story to tell people about for my time. And iteach was um during the observations, I was teaching in the classroom. And um just because our schedules, like, didn't quite match up to the class, I would have preferred to be observed. I actually got observed in my class that um was a little wild. They definitely had the worst time transitioning between like so many teachers. And then I also um the majority of that class had IEPs and 504s and it was also the very last class of the day. So everyone's last class of the day is very high energy and like ready to go home. And I remember I set up my computer in the back so that um my teacher could observe the entire classroom and see like how the students were reacting to my lesson. And um like how I was presenting the material because I don't just stand up in the front. I'm like walking around and demonstrating and walking to the different groups and helping them out. And for this particular lesson, we were studying adaptations. And I was having um the students first, they had to find chameleons that other classes had decorated and hidden to see how well their chameleons adapted to the classroom. And then once they were done collecting the chameleons, you know, time was up and then I had them create their own chameleons and try to have the chameleons um like blend in with the classroom. And since this class is like so high energy, this was something that was totally up their alley. They were all about this. They love class competitions. Um And so they were so excited. These kids, they went crazy when they were not only finding the chameleons but hiding their own chameleons and they were working together and they were climbing on the tables and hiding them and disguising them on the ceiling and putting them in the lights like they were going totally insane. They were so into it though. And at the end, you know, they had to fill out like a little reflection like this is the adaptation my chameleon was using um like whether it was like background camouflage or um like they just had to, there was a whole worksheet with it. Everybody ended up filling it out, they were all working together. They were all going crazy in my head. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, like on this video, it's showing these kids like jumping on the tables and like climbing up by the windows and going absolutely insane. But he ended up loving it because, you know, it could show that the kids like they were really um connected to me and they were really respectful of me and um they were super engaged in the lesson that I, I had. But I remember before I got the feedback from my observation teacher, I was like looking at my colleagues and I was like, oh my gosh, like this was the worst, this is the worst thing ever. Those kids were going crazy, but they were going crazy in a good way. They were really excited about um the chameleon competition. So, um that's probably my favorite story. Um And I love that my teacher caught on to the relationship that I had built with these kids because it was a very difficult relationship to get like they were very distrustful. They were very upset for all the changes that they had to go through um in such a short amount of time. Um So the the beginning of the year with that class, to the end of the year with that class, it was night and day difference. And I'm so glad that my observing teacher could see that just in the small amount of time that um he spent watching that class. So that's probably my favorite stories. Um Those kids like climbing around and going absolutely crazy about these chameleons.

Jessika Collins: I loved having access to the Teaching Channel. It was probably one of the top things that I liked about iteach that I didn't even expect myself to like, really enjoy that much. Not much of a video person I really like to read. Um Sometimes I have like a hard time focusing. So I, I wasn't expecting to really enjoy that part of the I teach program. But the Teaching Channel was like, beyond anything I could have expected like to be helpful. Um Something that was really difficult for me getting back in the classroom was like trying to remember all of the different things that my teachers in the past had done that I liked. And since it's just been so long since I've been in a middle school environment, I, I just had no idea like what to expect. And so like watching the videos on the Teaching Channel and seeing the different like classroom cultures. Uh it was so helpful and I was able to like, pick and choose things and the videos that I felt would be really helpful for my kids and for my teaching style. Um and something about like observing other teachers is like, if you were already teaching, then that takes away time from your own classroom and um being able to use the Teaching Channel, I could just watch those videos whenever I had time, like during my plan period or whatever, I wouldn't have to find coverage for my class and um take a personal day or whatever it be um to be able to see into these different classrooms. And I'm also like a Science teacher. So the culture for Science is much different than like the culture of like a Math room or a English room. And so um just being able to see like the different ways that uh different classes were using like group work and um table buddies and things like that. Like that was super helpful and things that I um like I had forgotten about just since it's been so long since I've been in middle school. I think it also like really helped uh set my, my expectations for like what to expect behavior wise from the kids. Um You know, I'm, I'm 29. So it's been a few years since I, I've been in middle school and just like the maturity level was um I mean, it's not what I was expecting. Like the eighth graders, they feel adults, they feel like they're adults, they, some of them look like they're adults already. Um But they like very much are not like there yet in terms of like maturity level and like higher order thinking. Um And so just watching some of the videos on Teaching Channel from some of the other middle school teachers, like, well, how you can meet those kids there, like how you can like start to encourage that independence but also like for yourself, like remembering like they're still children and they still want to have fun and like things that um like high schoolers wouldn't necessarily appreciate like a middle schooler still will. Um So uh that was so, so amazing and so worth the time just going through the different things on Teaching Channel. Um And then something that my school started doing with our PLT time, like our um our planned um community time was um we started doing like math interventions and English interventions and I'm a science person. So uh at that time when um the English and the math teachers were asking us for help, like one of the first things I did was go to Teaching Channel and look at some of these English classes and some of these English classes and some of these math classes and like interventions that they're doing in their classes. So that when I pulled my small group during PLT time that I would be able to um actually reach the kids and still like give them resources and content that um that they needed. Um So like seeing those frameworks that those English and math teachers were using on Teaching Channel were beyond helpful for um helping encourage literacy and math in these um and these kids that we were trying to uh trying to help before state testing time came.