Speaker: Megan Hall, Science Department Head and Teacher, EBRPSS
Please share how your experience was becoming a certified teacher through iteach.
Megan Hall: Becoming a teacher with iteach was the most easily accessible method to someone like me who already had a four year degree. Um, I appreciated that it was on your own time at your own pace and schedule in my day to day life. That was something that was very important to me. Yes.
How did iteach prepare you to be in the classroom?
Megan Hall: As a person who actually struggles with like generalized anxiety disorder. Um iteach, helped me prepare for my first day, which was honestly terrifying. I come into a classroom full of teenagers and I, I, I don't even really know how to greet them or what to do. Uh I was the youngest sibling, so I, I didn't have uh a lot of interactions with younger kids and I don't have any children myself. So, um iteach, you know, they give you this first day list of things that you need to do and be prepared for and that was really the biggest uh first step for me. Uh It, it, it helped me to overcome those first day jitters and feel prepared for walking into that classroom.
Please share a favorite memory or story about your time in the iteach program.
Megan Hall: So um one of my favorite memories or, or the most enlightening memory of iteach um was when I was going through, I think it's chapter or lesson at four or five. When you start learning about how do you differentiate lessons and uh for each student? And I'm, I have a, a wide variety of students as the teachers at an alternative high school. And I, I am not that familiar with the things that play into like autism or I wasn't and learning some of the things that autistic students struggled to overcome was really, really enlightening for me because I saw, I started to see the patterns in front of me and it just began to click and make sense so that I was able to alter what I was doing to better meet their needs.
How would you describe iteach in three words?
Megan Hall: iteach in three words would be quick, empowering and life altering. iteach is self paced. So you get to go through everything as you can. Uh you can go as fast or as slow as you want to. So for me, that was important, um it's empowering because it helped me um learn a lot of things that I didn't know about education and it's life changing because most of my life, I have struggled to make ends meet. And although teachers are not the highest paid people, it's much more than I was previously making. So it has changed the trajectory of my life. Um since I've become a teacher, I've been able to purchase my first home. Um It's an amazing thing to have an opportunity to go through a program in such a short amount of time that enables us to be successful. Teachers, for me giving that knowledge and sharing the knowledge that I have is, is so vital. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. Winston Churchill. Got that right.
