Photography & Computer Graphics Teacher: Zach Woodward
A few weeks ago I had my friend Gio Nebbio on the blog and asked her all about her teaching experience. Today, I have her awesome husband Zach Woodward. I think that his journey to teaching is so awesome and fun to learn about because he is a CTE teacher which stands for Career and Technical Education.
I really love the CTE pathway’s because it gives students a chance to try something out before they go into it a career. It can be scary to choose to get your major in something when you don’t know much about it. In high school I actually took a merchandise CTE class and fell in love with it. I then went and got my Bachelor’s in Apparel Merchandising because of that class!
Here is what Zach had to say about his experience as a CTE teacher:
1. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Growing up, I wanted to be an animator for Disney or Pixar.
2. What do you teach and why did you choose to teach that subject?
I teach photography and computer graphics. Previously, I worked in the industry as a graphic designer, so I was able to get a CTE credential to teach subjects like these. I've studied art for a looong time, so it's cool to be able to give some of that knowledge back.
3. What is a great tool you use in your classroom and why?
I use Google Slides for pretty much every assignment I give. I love the ability to have shared slideshows where kids can all post their work in one place. It makes it easy for students to view each other's work, and also makes grading a lot of assignments at once quick and easy. I also created a script for Slides that adds a new slide with the name for each student
4. Is there anything you do to accommodate students and how often do you use these accommodation?
For pretty much every assignment I create multiple ways to communicate the assignment to students. Some students are visual learners, some are auditory, and some are tactile, so I will post and deliver instruction in many different ways. I use videos, I will communicate verbally, I will demonstrate, and then my favorite method, I will let students experiment. Photography is a great subject for this, because instead of giving explicit instructions, I can say "grab a camera and play with the settings. Find your own method for creating the desired results."
6. Any advice for a new high school teacher?
Just keep swimming. Being new is a lot of work and is physically and mentally taxing, but if you can get through the first few years, it becomes much easier and much more rewarding.
7. How is it going teaching virtually?
Really easy so far. We haven't officially started yet, but getting my class together is going well. I'm taking a lot of influence from online college classes I've had in order to make the work flow easier.
8.Do you think anything will change in regards to education due to this Pandemic?
I think everything will eventually go back to normal, other than a few more concerned parents opting for online charter schools rather than traditional public schools.
Thanks again Zach for the interview!
Happy Teaching :)