SuperStar Teacher — Holli Pearce— Interview
This week’s SuperStar Teacher is Holli Pearce. Holli is the mother of four children, boy 17, girl 15, boy 12 and girl 8 and has a dog Lily and 3 chickens, Hermione, Luna and Lucy. When she first started going to school it was to be a civil engineer, then she changed that to Epidemiology but hasn’t done anything with it until all of her children are out of the home. She continues learning and loves to learn new things and typically figures out how to do something on her own, like how to knit, crochet, make jewelry, etc. Now if she wants to learn she turns to YouTube. Holli is a SuperStar on FeedbackPanda! Check out what she has to say about teaching for VIPKID and writing Feedback as well as some photos of her beautiful family.
Tricks for staying alert: hmm…it took a bit (about a month) to get used to waking at 4:30 AM, but I’m normally a morning person usually 7 AM. However, once I’m up, I am up. I don’t drink anything, maybe water if I’m thirsty, but a splash of cold water on the face, mascara and tinted chapstick does the job.
Favorite Lesson to teach: Great question! I love teaching Level 6. I feel like I’m learning so much as well.
What do you do in between classes? I don’t have much time between classes. I typically tend to go to 26–28min since I extend a lot or get to know the students more. I love to chat 😊 if I do end at 25min, I get up and do 15 squats, 10 upright push-ups using the counter.
How do you use FeedbackPanda? I hope I don’t confuse anyone…I don’t like using chrome to teach my lessons, but this is what I use to enter FeedbackPanda. So first thing is I enter each classroom about 15 minutes before class and use that to open FeedbackPanda for each class. I then close out the classrooms, keeping FeedbackPanda open. I minimize Chrome which has FeedbackPanda open with all the tabs of each student I will teach. I then open Explorer to get into the classroom and teach my classes. I write about each student in the notes section of FeedbackPanda, I input their birthday, write their Chinese name in the nickname section and their English name in the Name section. Before classes begin and depending on the level/age of my new student, I ask each one when their birthday is, what city they live in and how old they are. I keep track of where my students live in a google map I have. I also write this in my notes on FeedbackPanda.
Describe your Feedback Style/Structure: I write how they did in class, then I talk about the slides and how they did. Such as, Baobao did great blending cl- and st- words such as clap and stop. I then tell them how much I love teaching their student and how I look forward to teaching them again. I thank them for allowing me to teach their child as well.
Good Feedback Must Contain… detailed information about the course and how the student did. If the student needs to practice pronouncing or adding, etc.
What do you like to see when checking the Teacher to Teacher Feedback? I like to know if the student can read well or needs help. I want to know if a difficult student did better with a certain technique or not. I also want to know if you found out anything the student likes or doesn’t like.
Notes or comments to the teachers who import your templates: Thank you!! I love FeedbackPanda and how, if we are in a hurry and can’t write up something, we can use one another’s templates. I hope you like my templates! If my template is too personal, I’ve been trying to go back in and change them as I’ve gotten them again, but please let me know so I can change them to a more general form.
