Personal Narrative: My Interview With Sandy Brier

Through this assignment, I had the opportunity to interview Sandy Brier, a FACS teacher in Iowa. Sandy studied FACS at NDSU for her first two years of college, but then transferred and received her degree at Valley City in Elementary Education in 1982. She subbed for 20 years so she could be a stay-at-home mom. When she was ready to have full time employment again, she was offered an open position teaching FACS, but she did not a have a FACS degree. So she ended up teaching while receiving her FACS endorsement. Sandy was a non-traditional FACS teacher because she taught without a certified background and had to receive an endorsement. Through that process, she also faced several obstacles. I asked Sandy what her most rewarding and most negative experiences were teaching FACS. The most rewarding for her was getting to see her students enter into FACS careers and be passionate about what they are doing, knowing that she had a small hand in that. The other thing that she enjoyed was being able to watch her students learn and just see the lightbulb go off when they understood a certain concept. She found that the negative part of her job mostly revolved around the new initiatives that were issued, which would change every so often. I asked what was an obstacle she had to overcome in becoming a FACS teacher. Her main obstacle was to obtain the license she needed to teach FACS. She had 2/3 of her endorsement already from starting the FACS program at NDSU at having a teaching degree, but she still had to go back to school. Her advisor wanted her to student teach again as part completing her certification, but at that point she had already been teaching FACS for two years. So she had to try to work around a system that was intended for young college students without teaching experience. She was able to have someone come in and watch her teach and give her her certification. I …show more content…
Her positive and negative aspects of teaching sound very much what I picture mine to be like. I would find it very rewarding to have a student choose a career related to FACS and know that I made a difference in their life by helping them choose a career that they like. Even seeing my students be able to use the knowledge that they learned in my class in the real world would be extremely rewarding. The negative part for me would also be the same. I get concerned over what regulations will be in place when I become a teacher. I think the government does have a place in regulating education. However, it should not be at the expense of students. I think her mentoring program was a good idea to incorporate into the school. By taking the time to invest in each student, the school was able to see major improvement, and she was able to see her students learn more because they were more dedicated to their schoolwork. I also admire her patience with her students. To say that you never had a bad kid takes an extreme amount of patience and willingness to work individual students’ needs. I work at the Y right now with the after-school program and I definitely wish that was something I could say. I think her mentality inspires me a lot to be more open minded about a kids needs and their situation before labeling them as a bad kids and writing them