Listen

Watch

Can you tell us about yourself? 

Hi, my name is Brooke Prince. I am an eighth-grade science teacher at Blue Ridge Middle School. We are located in South Carolina. I have been here for five years. 

Why did you start a career in education?

So I've always wanted to be a teacher since I was a little girl. I always played school and it's just something I always wanted to do.  I actually started college as a pre-med major for being a pediatrician and, um, two years in, I just knew I wasn't on the right path and I switched to education and I haven't looked back since.

If you could have any other job what would it be and why?

if it was my ideal job, I would still be working with children before. I graduated college and started my teaching career. I actually worked for an amazing company called hope reach and they work one-on-one with children who have autism. And I loved doing that. It's still teaching kids, so technically you're still teaching, but that's probably what I would do if I had to be something outside the education career field. I would probably own a bakery. I love to bake. I have been diagnosed with Celiac for five years now. And so I had to really change all of my baking techniques and skills to kind of geared towards, um, gluten-free bakery options because most places don't have those. And so that's probably what I would do if it had to be outside of the education field would be on, on bakery with those types of options for people

How are kids different now than 30 years ago?

How are kids different from 30 years ago? So I wasn't actually born 30 years ago, but I know what, how I was growing up compared to kids now. And kids now, um, have a lot of media at their fingertips and, um, video games and all of those things. So they're really a lot different from even how I was whenever I was little, because when I was younger, you played outside more. You, um, really interacted with people more than you do now. And media and video games and technology and cell phones really didn't come around until I was probably in middle school. So I grew up all through elementary just knowing that there were four channels on the TV to watch in the afternoons, or you could go outside and play. So it's, it's really, it's still a good bit different.

How is Teaching different now than it was 30 years ago?

How is teaching different? If so, I can only imagine that whenever I was in school, you had a lot more textbooks and worksheets and paper and pencil  where you were actually having to write things down and say things out loud and stuff like that. Whereas now, um, you can still have teachers that do that, but a lot of times teachers use more digital approaches because that's what the kids know and are into. And they want everything really fast in their face. And that's just what they're used to. So teaching now is not necessarily harder or easier than it was back then. I think it's just a different style of teaching.

What would you tell someone who wants to become a teacher?

If I could give advice to someone coming into the teaching field, I would probably tell them just to be flexible. Um, and then also just get to know your kids. The better relationship you have with your kids, the better your teaching experience is going to be. I love coming to work every day, but I have a great relationship with all of my students

What would you change to help kids learn better?

And then once, and then one thing I could change to help kids learn better. So I can't actually change this, but if it were possible to change it, I would probably, um, change how kids learn. So some kids have delays and have disabilities and stuff like that. And I hate to see those kids work so hard to understand what the average kid can understand like that it really breaks my heart to see them have such a hard time. And if I could change one thing, that's probably what it would be.