Special education teacher Julia Pingree grew up in Southern New Hampshire and recently moved back to New England after spending college and a year post-grad in Charlotte, N.C. Pingree is a Registered Behavior Technician (RBT) who works in special education classrooms, supporting students with disabilities. She comes from a family of teachers and helping others is in her nature.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you explain your job?
I work in the special education rooms with the Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBA) to target behaviors in students; increasing communication, increasing independence, decreasing challenging behaviors and things like that. It’s definitely a team effort, working with the special education teachers and the paras and everybody involved. But my role is to look at things through a more analytical lens of behavior and figure out how we can support the student to give them more success throughout their day.
What got you into the RBT sector of teaching?
In college, I eventually transitioned my major to be special education. My whole family is a family of teachers so I was like, “No, I’m not doing that forever.” I resisted it so hard. But ultimately I knew that I wanted to be in a field that was helping other people. That’s just kind of my drive and my nature. I knew that I didn’t want to be a traditional lead teacher, so I was like, “What can I do to kind of incorporate my science brain and my social science brain and a love for working with kids and mix them together?”
What are some of your hobbies and interests?
I love spending time outdoors, hiking, skiing and all of that kind of stuff. I’m a reader again now. I feel like school took it out of me for a minute but now I love to read for fun. I love “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah. She’s an awesome author. She does a lot of good historical fiction books which have been my favorite lately.
What are your favorite memories from high school?
I went to Bow High School in New Hampshire and we were a very athletic school district. Some of my favorite memories were definitely winning state championships. I remember my senior year, our football team won the state championship and everybody was on the sidelines cheering and we rushed the field and it was so much fun. I played soccer in high school up until my junior year and was also a horseback rider outside of school and that eventually took priority.
What’s a hope you have for your students this year?
With anything, my hope every single day, and in any decision I make with students, is to try to just increase independence and increase their involvement in the community. It’s just such a big thing. I feel like it’s easy for us in these classrooms and these programs to function within our own little bubble, but of course remembering that everything we’re doing for them is to ultimately keep them a part of the community and interacting with other students that they’re not always around and being able to do activities that maybe previously they haven’t been able to do because of whatever their challenges are.
What’s your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part of my job is definitely the little wins every day. Some of our students have a really hard time communicating and a really hard time regulating their emotions, but getting a little smile when you tell them “good job” or just the little wins of things that they weren’t able to do yesterday. Sharing that with other people in the community is definitely awesome as well.
