
I have been volunteering, tutoring, facilitating, and teaching in classrooms and educational spaces for over 2 decades, and I am finally taking the step of becoming a secondary classroom teacher. Working in education has always been my path, despite taking an alternative route to a K12 classroom. My belief in education as the best tool for solving the world’s problems is foundational to the ways I approach teaching and learning and my pedagogy is heavily influenced by lived experience. As I obtain my Masters in Applied Teaching, my journey as a lifelong learner continues and I look ahead to new goals.
My interest in teaching began in elementary school, where I had my first official classroom post as a volunteer in the kindergarten classroom. I continued to volunteer in classrooms throughout high school and community college, many times in that same kindergarten room. I worked with children in many caretaking capacities and ultimately was able to participate in several immersive practicums while attending UW. One was paired with a course on teaching sustainability, and I was able to work in the Education Department at the Burke Museum where I led field trip groups and helped facilitate activities. The other placement was in an alternate middle school, where we guided student groups through a Literacy Through Photography curriculum. While in Seattle I also acted as an orientation leader for First Year Programs, leading incoming freshmen, transfer students and parents through all-day programs.
At the same time that I was participating in UW’s Education Department, I was also being heavily influenced by my major. Community, Environment & Planning (CEP) is a student-governed program, self-proclaimed as an experiment in education. Through a social contract of community for participation, the program offers real experience in creating connections, forming consensus and making things happen. Along with building a skillset for attacking problems, CEP equipped me with a framework for viewing the philosophy of education and enabled me to construct my own pedagogical ethics.
The most impactful guiding force however has not come from a classroom or a school. My most profound push toward teaching has been motherhood. Perhaps it is because it revealed to me the inherent truth that knowledge truly is power and that the more I learned about child and brain development, the better I got at mothering. Or maybe it is because it pushed me to finally struggle at something that I could not quit, so far that I could not help but adopt a growth mindset. It could even be that it is because it drove me to develop real compassion, to deepen my ability to search within another person and help them see their own light. Whatever it was, being a mother has proved to me that despite an imperfect system and lacking any public praise or status, teaching is the profession where I belong and where I can make the most happen.
As I near the end of my student teaching I have a renewed confidence in this path, trusting that it is not only right, but the right time as well. The journey that has brought me to this point has been full of untold insights, helping me manage my classroom intuitively and feel confident to participate in school improvement planning throughout my practicum. I am eager to grow as a teacher and find my place within a school community.
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