-: My name is Lisa Clayton and I am a professor
in the Department of Elementary Education
here at the University of North Alabama.
I teach courses that deal with early childhood language arts
and reading, so basically I teach people to be teachers.
So I have students throughout different courses.
I teach, like I said, reading courses,
I teach reading assessment courses,
I teach undergraduates and graduate students.
I also supervise interns in the field.
So basically, a semester for me
looks like teaching 12 hour loads,
so that's teaching, basically, four courses,
or if one course is more than three hours then that adds up.
Whatever adds up to 12 hours
and being in the classroom with my students,
providing instruction in that traditional setting,
but also providing an online environment for them
to have discussion and then also being able
to supervise them out in the local schools
and in our laboratory school here on campus.
So, our students have a lot of opportunities to, of course,
learn about how to be a teacher in the classroom.
But we want to put them in situations that are real life.
We don't want to just keep them here on campus,
we want to go take the knowledge that we have given them
and put them right out into the schools
and so I will teach something to them
and then we go implement that in the classroom,
and so we will work with cooperating teachers
in the schools and let them see
if what they thought worked really does work.
So as a professor we should all excel in teaching
and scholarship, research, which goes with scholarship,
and service.
And so, yes I teach approximately four classes
sometimes that can be a little bit more
if I take on a overload
or if I teach a Freshman Experience class,
but sometimes it's right at that 12 hour mark.
And so then, yes as a professor,
we also have to hold office hours each week
for our students.
Those might be held on campus
or they might even be held online as well,
but we want to provide
that face to face exposure for our students to feel
that they are welcome in our office at any time,
and it's just an awesome experience to work with students
because we're there to help guide them
as an advisor through their college career.
From freshmen all the way to their senior level
and into they're getting a job themselves.