Often, to know who you are and where you are going, you must know who you were. In the following paragraphs, I have detailed the steps which I have taken in my life that have led me to my career choice. Also, I have described how my experiences as a Special Education and Honor student will make me a better teacher.
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Acquisition of a Tool Kit
I grew up in a family that promoted knowledge as religion. I can't give a specific example of when this particular idea was instilled in me, because I feel like I have always carried this belief with me. However, that does not mean that I was always so keen to excel in school. The key concept of knowledge as religion, and the underlying concept of religion as spirituality, led me, in my early schooling, only to pursue those subjects that I felt were interesting (those that were spiritually enriching).
Though this kind of self perpetuation led to a good deal of tangible knowledge about the world around me, at no length did I have any desire to learn about the printed word. I recall that in first grade I would constantly check my answers, on any given worksheet, with those of the children sitting around me, just to make sure I was doing the assignment correctly (since I could not read the directions).
In second grade they would pull me out of class, for a certain length of the day, and walk me down the hall to a little room where I received one-on-one instruction over commonly used words. The one I most expressly remember is the word "The.” But, perhaps, this is because this was the first word I was ever able to recognize in print. It wasn't that I necessarily read the word; I still had no clue why the letters T-H-E spelled the word "the” - but I could recognize patterns.
Come fourth grade I was failing every spelling test. I refused to read below grade level books. But, then again, I refused to read in general. My lack of proficiency must have been carrying over to my other subjects too, because this is when my parents started to take more active measures. Once a week they would accompany me to a tutor. Also, at that same point in time I was enrolled in a pre-special education class. This class was supposed to focus on setting "realistic goals" for one's self and following through; such a class was probably designed to prevent borderline children from falling behind. However, in a lesson about goal setting I had mentioned that I planned to get straight A's before I graduated, and I distinctly remember the advisor/teacher informing me that I should form more "realistic" goals.
It hasn't been until recently that I have realized that up through this point in time I had never had a teacher believe that I could succeed in academics. And, though I did not believe I was incompetent, their low expectations of me generated low expectations within myself. I have explained this long story about my first four years of schooling only to contrast it with my experience from fifth grade and beyond, in hopes of illuminating just how freeing it was to have had a teacher who cared.
In fifth grade, I entered Mr. Keller's class and special education with Mrs. Reading. Mr. Keller had a knack for creating a community, not just a learning environment. If there was the hope of snow, we would have to use the words "frozen precipitation" in replace of snow, because the mere mention of the word would have jinxed our chances, or so said Mr. Keller, and we believed him. Whenever
Consider Mrs. Reading. She made an exceeding effort to communicate with Mr. Keller on my progress. She also had a knack of inferring when I did and did not need help. She never insulted my intelligence by offering help when I did not need or want it. And, when I did need help, she never dumbed down the curriculum for me, but merely explained it in a different manner. Perhaps, what I enjoyed most about this period in my schooling was that my teachers aided me in using many different learning modalities to take control of my own knowledge acquisition - an example in kindness that to this day I accredit the very extent of my schooling to it. Not to mention, they publically praised my accomplishments, without ever mentioning my shortcomings. In essence, they enabled me to believe in myself.
A few years after Mr. Keller and Mrs. Reading I was expelled from the special education program on account of high academic achievement (honor roll, two straight years). My sophomore year of high school, I was accepted into Honors English. And, the third semester of my college career, I received straight A’s for the first time.
Speaking about college, my junior year of high school I began working as a ride attendant as
Currently, I will graduate in December with a degree in Middle Childhood Education, in the areas of Math and Language Arts. I chose these two subjects because Math was always easy for me (I have been tutoring math since my sophomore year of high school) and Language Arts was hard. Over my years at
When speaking of the classroom in general, as you can imagine, I want to be the kind of teacher Mr. Keller and Mrs. Reading were. I believe to enhance student's learning school needs to be a community of interactive citizens who all contribute knowledge to a melting pot of thought. Children need to be encouraged to speak up and out, praised for creative thinking and never scrutinized for trying. On top of that, I believe every students should be given the tools to perpetuate their own learning as I was. School is not just the acquisition of fact by the student but the continuing effort made by the student to figure out the intellectual, social, and emotional world around him (and to determine where, perhaps, he may fit into the scheme of things). In short, school should be a safe place to think.
