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Can you tell us about yourself? 

Hi everyone. My name is Yvonne Cosme-Martinez and I work at East Morrisville intermediate school in Morrisville, North Carolina. I am a fifth-grade teacher. I do ELA and science and social studies. And I have been working at East Morrisville for this will be my fourth year coming up, but altogether I've been a teacher for 14 years. 

Why did you start a career in education?

Why did I have a career in education? Well I actually, this is a second career for me. I started in the business, but then I went back to my passion, which was teaching and my dad was a teacher. So as a little girl, I always would see my dad with the papers and whatnot. And so I have a lot of teachers in my family, so I think it runs in our blood, the passion for teaching.

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

If I could have any other job, why would it, what would it be, and why? Wow, that's a hard one. I already had my own business. So after doing that I went to actually do what I wanted to do. So I don't know if I would want to do anything other than teaching, besides, you know, I did the career business already, and I did that for very many years. And then later in life, I chose what I was passionate about, which was teaching

How are kids different now than 30 years ago?

how kids are different now than 30 years ago. Wow. I could say thinking back to when I was a child, um, I think there was less hands-on work where now we do more, hands-on more manipulatives technology definitely has changed, um, the face of how we teach now. Especially now during the pandemic, we've had to actually teach everything virtually. And so when we didn't have that option years ago, so I couldn't even begin to imagine what a pandemic would look like years ago. 30 years ago, much less where everything is shut down and you can't be in a school. So that's definitely been a big change. The technology. How is teaching different? Oh, that's how teaching is different. How a kid is different. Sorry. I went backwards.

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

I think kids now depend on technology more because we have it, whereas 30 years ago, um, kids depended more on the teacher per se. Um, other than technology also kids  from when I was a youth, um, they, their creativity and originality came from being outside more. They were able to use more of their imagination because they were outside exploring kids these days. Don't really like to play outside. Um, they like to be on their devices, whether it's their phone or their iPads or their computer. So I think that's one thing that kids have definitely, uh, we've seen the shift in kids, um, and how they act within, you know, the last 30 years.

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

What would you tell someone right now that is thinking about becoming a teacher? Wow. It's hard. It's a lot of work. Lots of work. However, When those light bulbs go off and those kids get that aha moments where they finally get what you're trying to teach them. There's no other feeling better than that. There really isn't. So yes, it's a lot of work. Yes. You work a lot of hours. But in the end it's so worth it. When you know that you've made a difference in that child, even not only academically, but personally, I, I make it, I take pride in building relationships with my students in the classroom and they come to me with problems and I love that they, they trust me and they respect me and they feel safe to come speak to me.

What would you change to help kids learn better?

The last question is something that you would change to help kids learn better, um, not necessarily change, but this is something that I do and I wish more teachers did it. I think that building relationships with your students is the number one thing. You can't go into a classroom trying to take over and trying to run things and not build relationships with your kids. If your kids respect you and they trust you and they can confide in you, I think no matter what challenge you bring up to them, I think that they will do their best to work for you and do the best that they can do. From what you asked of them, I think that's important that we build those relationships so that kids can learn better because they want to please you. And even if they continue having trouble, they know that they can come to you and you will provide them some type of differentiation so that they can, uh, get to where they need to be. And that's it. I thank you for the opportunity.