Introduction

Hello Dear Reader,

My name is Lisa Adhikari.  I’m from Portland, Oregon but was transplanted to San Jose, California a year and a half ago.  I never realized how Portlandy I was until the first time I tried sharing my life story down here with someone within the first five minutes of meeting them.  There was an uncomfortable silence as we stood there awkwardly.  I waited for them to share their life story with me in return and they contemplated ways of escaping.  Other Northwest traits have surfaced such as discovering that I am highly suspicious and avoidant of the bright thing in the sky that should not to look at directly.  I am still searching for good bread and desperately miss cafes (Starbucks doesn’t count) and crepes (Crepevine doesn’t count).  My husband, two daughters, and I make up an interracial and intercultural family of the heart, which has deeply influenced my worldview and informs my teaching.

I have never met a subject I didn’t find interesting and pride myself in being a bit of a polymath.  My first love was the humanities, which led me to a BA in Social Science from Portland State University.  I enjoyed my own knowledge journey to such an extent that I wanted to share my love of learning with others and earned an MAT in Elementary Education from Lewis and Clark College in 2006.  In the years following graduation, I have taught as a full time elementary teacher and as both a long and short term K-12 substitute.  It was during my years as a substitute teacher that I realized that, as much as I loved teaching kids at the elementary school level, that my long term interest was in teaching high school.  I also discovered a fascination with STEM and began taking classes in math and computer science both at Portland Community College and Portland State.  After relocating to the Bay Area in 2015, however, I decided to return to my humanities roots and add high school English and Social Science authorizations to my teaching credential and apply for high school positions for this next year.  I am looking forward to using my diverse set of skills to serve the students and community at whatever school I find a home at.

Personality Test Result

I am an ENFP with strong tendencies toward T and J.

Extrovert: I have always been fascinated with people and nearly ended up in social psychology, which I guess is similar to teaching in many ways.

Intuition: In each classroom I find myself in, I am instantly curious about the students and their dynamic. Years substituting have given me an ability to quickly evaluate the different personalities and how they affect each other and align my management strategy to be the most effective.

Feeling: While I am very aware of the role personal values and morals play in any social environment I am just as comfortable detaching myself and systematically analyzing a situation.

Perception: Substituting has honed my flexibility and improvisational skills, however, I also have strong Judgement tendencies that I expect will come out much more in my own classroom.

How did your personality affect your choice of content area?

Ultimately I am a people person.  I like to empathize with people, analyze people’s motives, and figure out why people are the way we are.  It would be abnormal for me to not hijack complete strangers to ask their input on some topic of interest in order to get a more randomize sample of opinions and experiences.  The content areas of English and Social Science give me the most supportive framework to explore the state of being human through the lens of both history and language.  The two content areas also greatly inform each other to the extent that, I feel that it is difficult to pull them apart.  Literature provides a fascinating exploration into the state of being human through history and geography.  Meanwhile insights can be gained into history, economics and government through the literature of that time and place.  My skills with math and computers, I ultimately see, as tools to support and complement the work I will do in a humanities based classroom.

How does or will your personality affect your relationships with your students?

As a substitute teacher of 9, or is it 10 years, I have survived by my ability to quickly read a classroom and adopt a management style that will best fit the classroom dynamic.  This fits very well with EN as well as my flip flop between F/T and P/J attributes.  The best way to sum up my relationship to students is that I have a lot of conversations with them.  A hobby of mine is behavioral science, which I frequently use to inform my student interactions.

Teaching and Learning Style Results

How will your teaching and learning style affect your teaching and your students' abilities to be successful?

Teaching style was difficult for me to answer because I have become so adaptable over the years as I change classrooms, subjects, and grade levels almost daily.  I am not surprised that my biggest challenge is going to be developing a more sequential mindset since the nature of subbing largely requires a global mindset.  I am also accustomed to letting students take charge and showcase their knowledge since, while I might have general content knowledge, they are the experts in their current classroom learning experience.