My Biggest Disappointment

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Home : 2002 : July : 16

My Biggest Disappointment
By Amanda K.

I'm not really sure what my biggest disappointment has been... I learned early on not to dwell on the negative in this profession, focusing on the positive instead.

However, in an interview they probably want a more concrete
answer, and this is what I would say. I worked as a special ed. teacher for my first year of teaching. I had a student with whom I worked for a few months. I taught him quite a bit and he was finally making progress, and then his mom moved and he left the school. A couple of months later, he bounced back to the school, and you could tell he had learned very little in the interim.

In fact, he had actually slightly regressed. I was very disappointed and started the whole process again with him.

I think that this is a good answer (one that I have embellished slightly to fit the question) because it points out a teaching strength while answering the question at the same time. And even though I have embellished it a bit, anyone could believe that something like this could happen, and I would certainly be disappointed if it happened to me. Plus, a lot of people can identify with this story. You probably have a similar story that you could use.(Thankfully, the real story is that he learned a great deal in the absence, almost enough to disqualify himself for special ed., but it took him a few days to get used to me again and show off his talents.)