The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Erin M. during the 2007-2008 League.
Shadowing a Local Leader - Harriet Morris, Teacher
Today I had the privilege of having the pleasant opportunity to shadow local leader, Mrs. Harriet Morris. Mrs. Morris has two sons: Andrew, and Chad, and has been married to David Morris for over 35 years. Mrs. Harriet Morris worked as a banker for 30 years at the Bank of America, and now is beginning her second year of teaching 4th graders for Hillsborough County Public Schools.
What I expected to see when I arrived at the school with Mrs. Morris, was a nicely laid out, clean and pristine classroom ready to welcome it's students Monday morning with open arms. What I saw however, was not quite what I expected. True, it was a beautiful room, but with boxes, and books everywhere it was hard to imagine any students being able to use the room.
Tuesday night, my Great Aunt Harriet had warned me to dress down as much as possible, "Some of these teachers you'll look at and wonder where they came from, but it's just because of all the dirty work we're doing down there right now." Boy was she right! The first job Mrs. Morris had me do was to take down all 10+ plastic tubs that were on the top of her shelves and clean them off. And after two years of being untouched they were disgustingly filthy. After the tubs were cleaned, I opened them all up and organized and labeled the boxed and its containments. The next job was to staple the letters onto two of her five bulletin boards. Which doesn't sound like a lot of hard work, but when you're stapling and unstapling, and trying to put the letters up in a certain order around planets and posters and things, it can get rather intense.
After working on the letters for the bulletin boards, we organized a lot more boxes, and worked on the actual set up of the room. Through out the day, I was able to meet several of the teachers, and see Mrs. Morris interact with her team-teacher, Miss Julie. Another wonderful person that I was able to meet was Miss Natalie, Mrs. Morris' team teacher last year, from England. I also was able to stand in on the little rendezvous that took place throughout the day. As Mrs. Morris and I would pass a person, she would introduce me, and then they would begin a conversation. For example, the speech teacher caught Mrs. Morris and I while she was checking her mailbox. She wanted to let Mrs. Morris know that one of her students was mildly autistic. In such a way, that when the child fell down, or went to grab something, he would simply freeze, and then you have to ask him what he was doing, or tell him that he needs to get up.
After lunch, Mrs. Morris and I went down to the Media room to explore what cut outs they had that we could use to design her fifth and final bulletin board ( her third one, for math, was designed as most of her room in a deep sea theme, with pictures everywhere from Odyssey Marine Company, where her husband David works). While we were down there, I must have cut out at least 250 different pelicans, whales, sailboats, and manatees to use as decorations on her board. And of course after cutting them all out we had to begin stapling them onto the board. This type of work, and outside teacher interaction continued all throughout the day. We closed out the day, with one final trip to Mrs. Morris' boss' room to get some more math books. As a team teacher, Mrs. Morris has a group of twenty two kids in the morning and then twenty two different children in the afternoon, leaving her with forty five children total. Our little quest to find more math books only left us with twenty four books total, presenting yet another challenge for Mrs. Morris.
The day that I spent with Mrs. Morris was definitely a new experience for me. Being homeschooled my whole life, I missed out on the classroom experience and all of the work that goes into it. It was really cool to be able to help, and actually do something that would be helpful to the students. I also really enjoyed meeting the different teachers, and seeing school through their eyes. One could definitely tell who was there simply because it was a job, but most were there because they genuinely loved teaching and working with kids. Sure, it can be a challenge, but it's a fun job that most of the people I met today seemed to enjoy, and as Mrs. Morris said, "I took this job, because I knew it would be the most fun I would ever have, and I'd get to work with children, what more could I want!?" That's definitely the mindset I would want my teacher to have!
