What is your name? Where do you teach? Suzea Millerhebert, I teach at Alton Elementary.

What subject(s) do you teach? I teach pre-kindergarten, children must be 4 years old to enter and they become 5 during the year.

What is your favorite thing about the subject(s) you teach? The information I learn. I wasn’t a great student when I was younger, now I LOVE learning things.

Suzea Millerhebert

How long have you been a teacher? This is my 20th year as a certified teacher, but I started working with children at a private school five years earlier.

How has the profession of teaching changed since you started? The children are different. They are doing things so much younger now. They can learn information at an earlier age, but they have also changed socially. One good thing is that I have never been in a classroom where I had this much technology and materials needed to teach. This is my dream classroom.

Why did you become a teacher? I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I was 10 years old. I just knew this was my calling, and I love it. I know that sounds corny, but it’s true.

What is your favorite thing about teaching? The children, they are so loving and funny.

Do you do anything special in the classroom to get through to your students? Yes laugh every chance we get. I also try to celebrate anything good my students do.

What is the hardest part of your job? The hardest part of this job is keeping up with all the paper work and not letting it take time away from teaching.

Are you involved in any extra curricular activities at the school? Not now because I teach Pre-K. In the past I’ve had dance teams and some drama.

Do you utilize any special technology in the classroom? Yes, we have a promethean board, digital projector, computers, laptop, digital camera and a card master.

Have you received any grants to aid you in the classroom? No, not yet.

What do you do during your summer vacations? Usually I teach summer school, go to workshops, and if time permits my husband and I go to the mountains.

Do you aspire to become a principal one day? Yes, I think I could have a positive impact on a school.

What’s the craziest thing that has ever happened while you were teaching? On a field trip to the mounted and K-9 division of the police department, they explained how they use the dogs to find criminals.

Then the students volunteered me to show how they train the dogs with a leather sleeve. A large German Shepard was released and ran to me. He started to bite at the sleeve as if he wanted to tear it off of me.

The police men told me to hit the sleeve and the dog’s nose to make him even madder. I wasn’t injured at all, just shaken.