Gonazalez, Lorenzo Caple

English

University of Dallas: UDigital Commons

University of Dallas 
UDigital Commons 
Oral History Interview Projects Education 
Fall 9-2016 
The Experience and Views on American Education with Sarah 
Samples 
Lorenzo Caple Gonazalez 
University of Dallas, lgonzalez@udallas.edu 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.udallas.edu/oralhistory 
 Part of the Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Gonazalez, Lorenzo Caple, "The Experience and Views on American Education with Sarah Samples" 
(2016). Oral History Interview Projects. 15. 
https://digitalcommons.udallas.edu/oralhistory/15 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Education at UDigital Commons. It has been accepted 
for inclusion in Oral History Interview Projects by an authorized administrator of UDigital Commons. For more 
information, please contact chohertz@udallas.edu, sgayler@udallas.edu, sthenayan@udallas.edu, 
emay@udallas.edu, cvandervoort@udallas.edu. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Experience and Views on American Education with Sarah Samples 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1. November 24th, 2016. 10:01 AM in the Maher Center at the University of Dallas in 
Irving, TX (Over the phone) 
2. Interviewee: Sarah Samples (SS); Interviewer: Lorenzo Gonzalez 
3. Guiding Questions:  
● What is your educational background?  
● What made you want to become a teacher? 
● What makes a person an effective teacher? 
● What is your occupation today? 
● Can you give me a description of the students in your class? (Engaging, 
academically, and socially) 
● Do you think schools do a good job of helping teachers discipline the students? 
● How has parental involvement shifted throughout the years? 
● How do you think our educational system has changed during your lifetime? 
● What makes you want to continue teaching? 
● What are your predictions for education in the future? 
● Anything else you would like to add about education? 
 
Summary of the Interview (Written Portion) 
 In the beginning of the interview, I greeted Mrs. Samples over the phone. I got her 
permission to conduct the interview and she allowed me to conduct the interview. She also gave 
me permission to submit the interview recording to The University of Dallas Oral History 
Repository. After I got her permission for these items, I continued to ask her the guided 
questions listed above. Her responses to some of the questions made me discover connections 
within our class this semester.  
After she answered the first guided question, I provided her with the second guided 
question, “What made you want to become a teacher?” (Sarah Samples, personal communication 
13, November 24, 2016). She responded saying that she has always enjoyed working with 
children ever since she got to high school and she desired to work with children even more so 
when she got to college (Sarah Samples, personal communication 14-15, November 24, 2016). 
Her response to this guided question portrays Mrs. Samples as if she is a very caring type of 
teacher; responding with “I have always enjoyed working with children” (Sarah Samples, 
personal communication 14-15, November 24, 2016), has a direct relation to the ideas of 
Marietta Johnson on the requirements of being a teacher. Johnson “believed that teachers needed 
to be compassionate and caring people who respect children as individuals” (Gutek, 1970). Mrs. 
Samples reasoning for wanting to teach fits the requirements of Marietta Johnson’s ideas. 
 After she finished answering that question, I asked her the next question on the list, 
which was “What makes a person an effective teacher?” (Sarah Samples, personal 
communication 16, November 24, 2016). Her response was a brilliant one. She said to be an 
effective teacher you need “to understand the diversity of learning” because “not all children 
learn the same way” (Sarah Samples, personal communication 17-18, November 24, 2016). She 
also says that teachers have to know their students. Her response of what an effective teacher 
should be able to do reminded me of something that we did not talk about in class, but I read 
about it in our Lessons of the Century textbook. It was a small article on a teacher named Opal 
McAlister. She talks about how a teacher should be and what a good teacher should be able to 
do. She states, “If I can’t be ahead of a kid, I had no business being a teacher.” (Lessons of the 
Century, 2000). This statement fits well with Mrs. Samples definition of what makes a person an 
effective teacher because if the teacher cannot even be ahead of the students to understand the 
student individually then it will be impossible for the teacher to be an effective educator.  
  After the guided question about effective teachers, I created a follow up question, “...a 
new teacher, how are some ways they can get more experience in being an effective teacher? 
(Sarah Samples, personal communication 22-23, November 24, 2016). Her response was not one 
that I expected. Mrs. Samples said that teachers need “to be willing to ask” (personal 
communication 26-27, November 24, 2016). She discusses that they need to be willing to ask 
other experienced teachers if they do not know how to do something or what to do. She also 
states that new teachers need to be willing to do “research” (Sarah Samples, personal 
communication 25, November 24, 2016) in order to become an effective teacher. Mrs. Samples 
says the same thing is necessary for classroom management. Her answer for how teachers can 
gain experience is that they need to ask more experienced teachers, so these new teachers can 
learn themselves. After she answered my follow up question, I became curious, so I created 
another follow up question, which was “...do you think the education programs are teaching 
teachers how to be effective teachers or do you think they kind of guide them through college?” 
(Sarah Samples, personal communication 32-33, November 24, 2016). I wanted to discover 
whether or not she thought the education programs just teach college students enough to get 
certified without teaching them how to actually teach. The answer I got was the one I expected. 
The first part of her response was, “I think that not until you get in the classroom, do you really 
know” (Sarah Samples, personal communication 34, November 24, 2016). She started to explain 
that the student teaching portion of the education programs was the most important part for 
future teachers to learn how to teach effectively. She explains that having a good teacher in your 
student teaching segment of the program can also impact the views of how a teacher should 
teach; she states, “...so when you student teach that is when you really understand. And if you 
have a good lead teacher when you student teach, I think that makes a huge difference too” 
(Sarah Samples, personal communication 36-37, November 24, 2016). As we got to the end of 
these two follow up questions, I realized that all her answers fit the ideas of a philosopher named 
John Dewey. The section where she spoke about having classroom management in order to be 
able to teach them efficiently is one of Dewey’s theories. Dewey believed that students should be 
put in an environment that they would be able to learn in, with the teacher as the guidance for the 
students. If you cannot control your class, as Mrs. Samples states, then you cannot provide the 
educational guidance the students need. Mrs. Samples’s answers to the questions of how teachers 
can become more effective and whether or not educational programs are creating effective 
teachers fits perfectly into Dewey’s ideas. Dewey believed in engaging in experiential learning 
will benefit the student in learning rather than other methods. One of the steps in his method was, 
“reflecting on past experience and researching the problem to find information that could be used 
to solve it” (Gutek, 1970). This method of Dewey was more for the students to learn, but before 
teachers become teachers they are students of the educational field, so Dewey’s ideas fits into 
Mrs. Samples’s answers of teachers needing to be able to “research” what they do not know and 
to learn from the student teaching experience to gain intelligence of how to become an effective 
teacher.  
After her responses, I asked Mrs. Samples about her occupation. She mentioned that she 
worked at a Catholic school, so I asked her why she specifically chose a Catholic school (Sarah 
Samples, personal communication 50, November 24, 2016). She stated that she was raised 
Catholic and that she had always been in the Catholic educational system, so it was where she 
felt comfortable. She also talked about her children and what she wants for her children. She 
states, “...so I thought the Catholic education is something I want for my children and I think it is 
important in their life” (Sarah Samples, personal communication 52-54, November 24, 2016). 
Her freedom of choice is what allows her to teach wherever she wants or even choose where and 
what type of education she wants her kids to receive. Her freedom of choice comes from the act 
drafted by Thomas Jefferson, which is called The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious 
Freedom. Jefferson’s act affected the school system, especially the public schools because it 
“meant that public schools should not instill the beliefs and doctrines or religious 
denominations.” (Gutek, 1970). Mrs. Samples did not mention this act, but I was sparked by her 
response of how she grew up Catholic and wanted to raise her own kids Catholic because this act 
of Jefferson is the reason why she has this choice of freedom today.  
Towards the end of the interview, I asked Mrs. Samples, “...how do you think are 
education system has changed during your lifetime? (Sarah Samples, personal communication 
156-157, November 24, 2016). Her response was that technology was the main difference in the 
classroom and later on she stated, “...I think that technology is going to be more and more in the 
classroom.” (Sarah Samples, personal communication 186-187, November 24, 2016). Her 
bringing up the topic of technology in the classroom connected me to a section that we learned 
about teacher education programs. As technology grew in our world, “State programs of teacher 
certification...intended to ensure that prospective teachers were competent in using educational 
technology.” (Gutek, 1970). Mrs. Samples’s answer was one that is still continuing to grow in 
the educational field. The increase in technology is forcing the education programs to implement 
a technology course in order to ensure the teachers are technology savvy.  
 
 
Reflection Portion 
 This interviewing experience was a new one for me. I have never interviewed anyone in 
my entire life, so doing this was awkward. I had to do it over the phone because Mrs. Samples 
was out of time for a long period of time and I really wanted to interview her because she was 
unique. During this interview, I discovered many different connections of our class this semester 
when listening to her responses to my guided questions.  
 One connection was at the beginning of the interview when I asked her about why she 
wanted to teach. She had told me that she had always wanted to work with kids and that she 
enjoyed working with kids (Sarah Samples, personal communication 14-15, November 24, 
2016). After she told me this I could not help, but think of an article we read in class written by 
Nel Noddings. Noddings stated, “When we care, we want to do our very best for the objects of 
our care” (Noddings, 1995). Mrs. Samples response made me realize that she is a very caring 
teacher because she genuinely wants to help the kids because she did not just join the teaching 
field for a job, but rather she wanted to work with the kids to help them succeed in their future. 
Another glimpse of Noddings’ ideas were later on in the interview when I asked her about how a 
teacher could make the students more social. (Sarah Samples, personal communication 81-84, 
November 24, 2016). She couldn’t give me a straight answer, but she did give me a specific 
example of how she asks the other kids in her class to include this little girl who is shy and quiet 
(Sarah Samples, personal communication 85-100, November 24, 2016). This inclusion of this 
little girl would definitely be in the spectrum of Nel Noddings curriculum of care. Noddings 
states, “...organize the curriculum around themes of care- caring for self, for intimate others, for 
strangers…” (Noddings, 1995). Even though Mrs. Samples is not directly telling the kids that 
they need to care for other people, she is teaching the kids a moral lesson by asking them to 
include the little shy girl into their groups. Therefore, the next time the kids see someone new or 
shy they will try to include that individual without Mrs. Samples having to ask and that is one of 
the aspects of Nel Noddings, which was to care for others and strangers. I completely agree with 
Mrs. Samples and Nel Noddings of implementing care into the curriculum because we need 
more people to care about each other, not only themselves. Our world will fall apart if people 
only care for themselves, so we need to implement this theme of care within the students at a 
very young age.  
 Another connection I discovered when interviewing Mrs. Samples was related to the two 
theorists Howard Gardner and Benjamin Bloom. My question to her was, “what makes a person 
an effective teacher?” (Sarah Samples, personal communication 16, November 24, 2016). Her 
reply was that a teacher who understands the diversity of learning and that not all students learn 
the same (Sarah Samples, personal communication 17-19, November 24, 2016). Her response is 
related to Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences because he believed that there existed many 
different intelligences in which students learned more efficiently depending on the type of 
intelligence they were strong out. Since Mrs. Samples does not directly say she believes there 
exist multiple intelligences, then I would have to say that her response to this question is more 
related to the ideas of Benjamin Bloom. In one of his articles discussing learning strategies, 
Bloom states, “Each strategy must find some way of dealing with individual differences in 
learners…” (Bloom, 1968). Mrs. Samples has similar ideas to Bloom’s in that students do learn 
differently, and she believes that we as teachers need to be able to discover these learning 
differences to become the most effective at what we do. After her response, she added in that 
classroom management is very crucial in being an effective teacher because “If they can’t control 
their class, then they aren’t going to be able to reach them to be able to teach them” (Sarah 
Samples, personal communication 20-21, November 24, 2016). I couldn’t agree more with Mrs. 
Samples on her definition of what an effective teacher is. I do believe for teachers to be 
“effective” they need to be able to understand each and every one of their students in order to 
help their students learn efficiently. Although I cannot directly cite this, I would still like to add 
in this opinion of mine. Since I do agree with Mrs. Samples on the definition of an effective 
teacher, I find it hard to believe that in the period where the school systems were more worried 
about quantity instead of quality, that there existed an effective teacher. The classroom sizes 
were way too big for a teacher to get to know every single one of their students which will result 
in the teacher not being able to teach efficiently.  
 In the middle of our interview, I asked Mrs. Samples about how her students were doing 
academically and she responded that some of her students were more academically inclined than 
others; so I asked her what was the difference between the more inclined students. She responded 
that “we have some that have (unintelligible) learning differences, so that makes a big 
difference.” (Sarah Samples, personal communication 64-73, November 24, 2016). This 
response by Mrs. Samples is more related to Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. 
The only difference was that she did not admit to believing in different intelligences, but she 
does have the idea that students have their own strengths and weaknesses. In an article, A 
Passion for Learning, Natalie Lorenzi writes to the parents of children in school explaining how 
the children have these learning differences and goes further into depth to explain that the 
learning differences fall into the categories with Gardner’s intelligences listed as the title of each 
category. Lorenzi states, “Schools often use the theory of multiple intelligences... to describe the 
different ways in which children process information” (Lorenzi, 2011). This statement is very 
similar to the way Mrs. Samples views the learning of her students. Although she might not have 
gotten these ideas directly from studying Howard Gardner, his impact on the educational field 
has been reached out to Mrs. Samples own beliefs. I agree with Mrs. Samples that the students 
do learn differently. As educators it is not enough to teach the kids the way you feel comfortable 
teaching. Sometimes, you have to make yourself uncomfortable to ensure the success of your 
students academically. We also need to find ways to not teach to the lowest academic students 
because if this is the case we will not be challenging the higher academic students. We need to 
understand our children and figure out the best way to reach them to be able to teach them (Sarah 
Samples, personal communication 20-21, November 24, 2016). 
 Interviewing Mrs. Samples has really opened up my eyes on different views within the 
school system today. Interviewing a teacher from a Catholic school definitely had an impact on 
the answers to my guided questions because the rules of discipline might be different or other 
implications between the different types of schools may have altered her answer, but it was still 
interesting to get the answers from someone with much more experience than me. Regarding our 
class, as I was interviewing her the connections were very clear to me which surprised me 
because I was worried she was going to give me short answers, which she did on some, but her 
short answers sparked the curiosity in me to ask more in depth questions. I really did enjoy this 
interviewing process and I would gladly love to do it again. If I were to do it again, this time I 
could get someone with even more experience, so I could have more in depth answers, but I was 
pleased with how everything worked out. The most important thing I learned from this interview 
project is that our educational system is always going to be evolving from technology to success 
in the classroom to new topics to learn in the education programs. The crazy thing is, while 
things are changing we are still receiving the same outcomes, which is not right and we need to 
fix it, but as Dr. Newstreet says, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Bibliography 
Bloom, B. S. (1968, May). Learning for Mastery. 1(2). 
Gutek, G. L. (1970). An Historical Introduction to American Education. New York: Crowell. 
Lessons of a century: A nation's schools come of age. (2000). Bethesda, MD: Editorial Projects 
in Education. 
Lorenzi, N. (2011). A passion for learning. Scholastic Parent & Child, 19(1), 82-93. 
Noddings, N. (1995, May). Teaching Themes of Care. 76, 675-679. 
 


The Experience and Views on American Education with Sarah Samples

https://digitalcommons.udallas.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=oralhistory

The Experience and Views on American Education with Sarah Samples

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of Dallas: UDigital Commons