By PIPER GALLAGHER
Senior Reporter
Shannon Warnock has 15 years of experience in public education, a field that she is very passionate about. After getting her bachelor’s degree in elementary education and master’s degree in school counseling here at Northwestern she spent time teaching at the K-12 levels.
Q. What sold you on coming to NWOSU?
A. I’ve been teaching some adjunct classes the last three years, which I’ve really enjoyed, and I wasn’t really looking for a new job. I just kind of had a conversation with some of the people who work here, and I loved Northwestern when I was going to school here.
Both my daughters went to school here. So it just kind of feels like home. So when I had the opportunity to do this as a professor, I just thought it would be like the greatest place to work.
Q. What is one of the first goals you hope to accomplish here?
A. Oh, gosh. I think really my main goal is to kind of take that shift from being in public education to higher Ed. And because of my passion for public education, I really want to help prepare teachers to be the very best that they can be. So that’s just really my goal is to work with future educators, advocate for them, and just help them be the best that they can be.
Q. What is your favorite class to teach and why?
A. I really like the child in adolescent psychology, class and teaching right now. It has a bunch of undergrads in it. It’s fun. I really enjoy the school counseling courses that I teach. Those are online, though, so I don’t really get to interact with the students. But I think the class I enjoy the most is probably my classroom research class, which is a graduate level course, where students create action plans. They identify a problem in education and then they come up with a plan on how to fix it. And they do the research behind it. So it’s always interesting to, you know, brainstorm those ideas, those problems they see while they’re in the classroom and then reading their research to see, you know, what they have come up with to kind of address the problem.
Q. What is your “superpower”?
A. Well, I think being a teacher is a superpower personally. You know, it’s been a long time since I’ve been in the classroom, classroom teaching, because I’ve spent the last few years as a school counselor. But I would say I think really one of my strengths is I’m just a really good listener and I think people usually feel comfortable around me, so I think that is my strength and that can, you know, that can be used in the classroom, out of the classroom in any setting. So I think that’s kind of my superpower.
Q. What is something most people don’t know about you?
A. I would say most people are generally surprised when they find out that I am not afraid of snakes, and I actually had a pet snake, a python when I was in college, you know, right out of high school, back many years ago. So I kind of like snakes. I think they’re cool. So I think that would be a fact that most people would be surprised by.