If you're in high school or college and are considering going into education, take a look at these insights from an actual high school teacher, Ms. Olga Fostiy. The interview took place in a Cupertino High School classroom on Thursday, June 23, 2016. This last year, Ms. Fostiy taught literature to high school freshman and juniors, and because she is relatively new to Cupertino High, is an excellent source for what kinds of problems and experiences teachers run into. Ms. Fostiy was raised in the bay area and has come back from her studies in New York to teach in a high school similar to her own.

Joanna Miakisz: Was being a teacher your first choice?

Olga Fostiy: Yes, it was. Even though it wasn't the first thing I did right out of college, but it’s something I wanted to do since pretty much senior year of high school when I had a really amazing English teacher, and I thought, “Oh, if I could do what he does, I’ll be fulfilled.” Then my path led me to the major in English, which I didn’t know I would do, but when I did a major in English, I was like “oh, what’s the logical thing to do with a major in English?" I love learning, I love my professors. Maybe I want to be a professor? Maybe I want to be a teacher? So I knew I wanted to be in education, although ironically I didn’t take any education classes in college. I took just lots of English classes.

JM: What makes the Silicon Valley a good or bad place to teach?

OF: Well, it’s a tricky question, [be]cause I don’t know any other places to teach. I have a good friend who teaches in New Jersey, and she's super happy, and in fact it seems like her experiences are really similar to mine. But aside from that, on the East Coast, where I lived for college then, [...] I didn’t know any other teachers really. Only teachers who did Teach For America, which is a very different kind of teaching program. [...] I love teaching in the Silicon Valley because I love Cupertino High School and I love the teachers here. Like my colleagues, who I met, and I love […] They’re such amazing role models, my students have been incredible, and I learned so much from them. I’m inspired by them, and I love going to work to see them, so it’s hard to generalize about the Silicon Valley [in] total, because there’s many different kinds of schools in Silicon Valley alone. But Cupertino, because I think it’s similar to the high school I went to, I can really relate to the students, and that’s why I like it a lot.

JM: What are the pros and cons of living here?

OF: I think the biggest con, and this is coming up a lot in conversations with teachers, is just in general how expensive it is to live here. And when I hear about teachers who leave the school or the district, I’m like, “Why did you leave? It’s an amazing school!” and they talk about how it’s too expensive to buy a house, so they move to other parts of the country. [...] Other parts of the country are definitely more affordable, and that’s something that impacts living in the Silicon Valley, but also, [...] at least in Cupertino especially, the sense of competition and the sense of pressure to do well [..] I really noticed this year. And even though I went to high school in the Silicon Valley, even just sharing about [...] your grades with friends, this was not something that we did. And likewise in college.

OF: It was very weird for me to hear my students publicly talking about their grades, regularly with their friends, both inside class, and outside of class. And likewise, even having a grade book that you could check regularly, and that really any minute you could check your grades, that was also not a thing when I went to high school. We did not have points, we did not have School Loop. [It was] like, you get your grade, you get your paper, you hold on to it, and you kind of expect that grade at the end of the semester. But you could never calculate [your grade]-- maybe only math we like calculated our grades and wondered like what score we’d get on the final, but [in] none of my other classes did I ever, even have the ability to calculate what score I needed to get on the final. It was kind of just like, "oh I generally got these grades, so generally I should [do this]. Probably, that will be my grade at the end of the semester," and the semester’s like a surprise when the report card came in weeks later. So that’s very different at Cupertino.[…]

OF: On the one hand I think it’s really great to be able to communicate about grades with students, and so great that they check, and then communicate with me about their grades, and then it’s so like transparent and open ‘cause grades in essence are a way to communicate to students about like where they’re at in terms of their learning. But at the same time, the kind of anxiety students feel about grades, especially juniors, something that really brought me down a lot this year, and I internalize that anxiety, and just the sense that people feel like their identity and self worth is tied to grades in a way that I don’t think it should be.

JM:What problems did you face in your first year of teaching?

OF: As a teacher what I learned at my education program [...] is you have to know “what I want my students to do” and then “what I need to do to help them to do that.” But the struggle with first year teaching is where you're teaching assignments for the first time, you don’t have the clearest sense possible about what it is that you want your students to accomplish, and you also don’t have the clearest sense possible about what are going to be the struggles that they’re going to face. And so I can’t really predict ahead of time, like what are going to be common misconceptions, or what are [going to] be common areas of struggle. I’m kind of learning it as I collect feedback and assignments from students, and likewise, having clear sense of the final assessment-- sure, I have models, rubrics, these assignments are created on a teaching team, I’m not doing this by myself, I have lots of support, and that’s how I’ve been so happy here. But at the same time, [...] I don’t quite know what I want in that essay, and I wish I did, and now as a second year teacher, I have such a clear sense of what I want from students, just having seen assignments where I’m like “Oh, they didn’t quite do what I wanted them to do." That means I need to do things differently to help them do what I want them to do.

JM: How do you feel about the older teachers you work with?

OF: Honestly, that’s been one of the best parts of being at Cupertino. I was working on a teaching team with a teacher who’s had twenty years of experience. Actually both my teaching teams had very experienced teachers, plus my teaching mentor, my new teaching mentor, is [around] her tenth year of teaching, [...] and having them as role models and mentors, people I could turn to and ask any and all questions, made my experience here so good. If I didn’t have that, I probably would feel very lonely, unhappy and [would] struggle in the dark. It felt so good that I could always ask them questions, and they were so open and didn’t judge me for asking so many [...]. Plus, I started my first year teaching with a bunch of other teachers who were new, so we formed a kind of like solidarity through that, and I would talk to the teachers and be like ‘Oh you’re going through the same struggle I’m going through!� I feel so much better that I’m not alone going through that struggle,” and also like “Let’s help each other!” That, also, is one of the reasons I’m so happy. If I was the only new teacher, or even like the only new English teacher, I think I would have had a different experience.

JM: What problems do you continue to face as a teacher?

OF: I really want to keep improving, and I’m scared that as a second year teacher, even though I’m growing and I’m getting better, I’m afraid of plateauing, or even making mistakes that I made my first year like not be[ing] able to foresee everything, because you never can. And I have a lot of support from other teachers that tell me “Don’t worry, you’re going to keep growing. Even when you make mistakes, making mistakes if part of the learning process. You don’t become an expert teacher until you’re like five, or you’re three [years into teaching].” [...] But I’m certainly not an expert teacher, and I don’t hold myself to those standards, but at the same time, like I think I need to hold myself to higher standards as a second year teacher, and I’m afraid of not meeting them and then dealing with that.

JM: Why did you choose to teach high school literature specifically?

OF: For me personally, high school was very formative, in that I think that was where I discovered my love for literature, and it was in high school. It was also, I think, where I discovered my love for learning. I think back to middle school, and I was kind of like -- I didn’t appreciate my teachers. I went to school, I was respectful, I wasn’t like a mean kid, but I didn’t have [the] conscious appreciation of learning that I gained in high school, and that [has] continued to be nurtured and part of my identity ever since then. So to be back in a learning environment, to enjoy love of learning with others who are discovering-- that is so exciting for me. And plus, [...] in high school, students really start to form their identities and what matters to them, and it’s so fun to be a part of that! To be like “Oh my gosh, you love poetry! I want to encourage that because that might be an important part of your life later, beyond high school.” At least for me, my core interest formed in high school.[...] Things that really mattered to me like health, exercising, yoga and reading, and poetry and art; all of that originated in high school for me.

JM: What would you say to anyone considering the teaching position, specifically what you’re in right now?

OF: Teaching is one of those professions that’s interesting because in some ways everyone knows about it. [I mean,] not everyone knows what, you know, a dentist does day to day. But with teaching, everyone can have a stake and a say because you’ve been a student, so you know about teaching. And that’s why we have such passionate debates in our culture, and teachers are blamed and people feel like they are able to blame teachers [just] because they went through school. But at the same time, it’s funny because I went through school, [so] you’d think I know about teaching. But I didn’t fully learn about teaching, and even what it’s like to think like a teacher, which I’m still learning, until I 1) talked to more teachers and went to more classrooms, and 2) started my education program and was working in a classroom. It was so different, for me, from the vantage point of a teacher, from a student. That was a big adjustment for me to be like “I’m not a student anymore.” You think differently as a teacher than you do as a student. At the same time, it’s important to keep the student perspective in mind. [...] For me it was this massive perspective change, for what I’m going through, to think like a teacher. So if anything, get to know the perspective of a teacher better. I think that’s why starting teaching was so hard for me, because that perspective was so new.

So if you were wondering about what being a high school teacher is like, hopefully this interview has answered a few very important questions, like "What is the difference between high school then and now?" and "What is the hardest part of teaching?" As always, remember to carefully take into consideration both the positive and negative parts of an occupation before going down that path. And finally, students, good luck!