Faculty Spotlight: Mike Wood
Earlier this week I was able to sit down with Associate Professor of Education, Dr. Mike Wood. I really enjoyed visiting with this kind-hearted and humorous man. Here is what I found out!
Me: How many years have you been in the field of education?Mike: 27 years.
Me: What made you decide to become a teacher?
Mike: I was teaching swimming lessons for Special Ed kids and fell in love with them. I started out as an Art major and then switched to Music but I decided my Sophomore year that I wanted to be working with Special Ed kids and switched to Education.
Me: What is your favorite thing about your job?
Mike: Working with the young people. I was a youth minister for 10 years, a t-ball umpire, officiated basketball, taught swimming lessons, etc – I have always been around young people and l just love it.
Me: What is your favorite class/subject to teach?
Mike: At the undergrad level, I like my Classroom Management course where I get to work with the pre-student teachers. At the grad level, I like School Law.
Me: What’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you in the classroom?
Mike: This isn’t really funny but one of the neatest things that’s happened throughout my career is when I was a principal and my sons went thru my school from K-4th grade. No other kids in town could say they went to school with their Dad! It was just a really neat experience to have them at my school like that!
[I asked Mike a follow up to this about whether his boys ever got sent to the principal’s office and he said “I think only once. They knew I was gonna be tougher on them than anyone else so they tried to avoid that!”]
Me: What do you like to do in your spare time?
Mike: [Spoiler alert: don’t read the following to your kids!] I am the Searcy Santa so I always have a lot of fun doing that around the holidays. I have a booth in the Court Square, I do the parade and I do private parties and stuff too. I love it. I also am the announcer at the Searcy High Lions Football games and work at the jail as a minister.
Me: If you could travel anywhere in the world all expenses paid, where would you go?
Mike: The place I go every summer – Scotland! [Mike leads a group of students every summer to Scotland for pre-student teaching. For more info on that trip see Spotlight on Scotland] It’s a beautiful country and the people are wonderful. If someone else was paying for it, I’d take a whole group with me and take them all around the country.
Me: What is your favorite season and why?
Mike: I really like Spring. The earth is coming back to life after winter and call me strange, but I actually like rainy/stormy weather. I like to just sit out on our porch and watch the clouds and lightning.
Me: If you could meet anyone in history, who would it be?
Mike: From an educational standpoint, I’d like to meet Horace Mann. He had some very interesting thoughts on education and I often see his quotes and find myself thinking “I like that idea”.
Me: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Mike: “Whatever you do in life, make sure you’re gonna be happy with it”. When I called home my sophomore year to tell my parents I wasn’t gonna be an Art or Music major anymore and was switching to Education, I was expecting a lecture from my Dad. Instead there was silence on the phone for a few minutes. I said “What? No lecture? I thought you’d be upset” and my Dad said “no son, this is really good. You need to do what makes you happy, not me, because you’re going to be doing it a lot longer than I am alive”. That always stuck with me and I have tried to impress that upon the students that I teach and advise. Don’t become a teacher just because your mom was a teacher or your grandma wants you to be a teacher. Become a teacher because you want to be a teacher. There’s enough teachers out there right now who don’t enjoy what they’re doing – don’t become one of those just because you were afraid to do something different.
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