Another aspect of my teaching, that I believe has really helped me, is my creativity. This picture shows a lesson that I taught about being a scientist and observing what you see. I created an In and Out machine, gathered materials (both big and small) and dressed up as a Mad Scientist and acted for the students. Each time I placed something into the machine, I would push some buttons, turn some dials, and out would come the item, either enlarged or shrunk. The students recorded their observations and made predictions about the function of the machine. At the conclusion of the lesson, the students wrote lab reports to illustrate and talk about what they had observed and learned.

As I state below, my family plays a large part in how I have become the teacher that I am today. Above is a picture of the wonderful people, my grandfather, my mother, my aunt, my sister and my grandmother, in my life who have helped me to become the person and teacher I am today.

So many things have happened to me before, and during my educational career that have shaped who I am as a teacher. First and foremost, my family has been an influence on my work ethic, and morals that I believe in. Another experience that has shaped the teacher that I am today is the fact that I work outside of school in order to pay for tuition. The last experience that has impacted my growth as a teacher has been my involvement with Rising Stars Academy and what they stand for.

From an early age, my family has instilled in me what it means to be a good person and what a strong work ethic looks like. I have always been taught to share my ideas, to think about others before I think about myself, and to go with the flow. I believe that all of these things are critical when you are a teacher. You must be a giving person to be a teacher; because being selfish doesn’t work when you have eighteen to twenty-five little lives depending on you to grow and to learn. You must also be a giving person in the respect that you put all others before yourself. Whether you are talking about colleagues or your students, their problems and ideas come before your own. When you are a teacher, you become a listener. When you have the ability to put others before yourself, you are always ready to listen and become an advocate for their needs.

Being a teacher is a selfless act. Coming from a long line of amazing mothers, it is no surprise that I have turned out just like them. I would do for someone else ten times before I do one thing for myself. My mother, grandmother, and aunt, are examples that I have followed from an early age. They are always going out of their way to make someone else’s day special, and I strive to do the same in my teaching career each day with my students and colleagues.

My family has also instilled a positive work ethic in me. Everyone in my family has worked hard, whether at a job or around the house; no one in my family ever stops working. They yard is always immaculate, the laundry is done, food is on the table, and the fridge is full of food. Not to mention the extra things that are always done; lunch is packed each morning, with a fresh pot of coffee waiting, and a note just to say ‘I Love You.’ These little things that my mom has always done for me growing up has left an imprint on me, and I do the same thing. I am always doing something, whether it is working, reading, teaching or lesson planning; there is always something to be done.

Another experience that has shaped who I am as a teacher is the fact that I have a full time job outside of school. Since freshman year, I have been working close to forty hours in order to help pay for school. When I started here at UVM, I was working around fifty hours a week, managing a candy store in the downtown area while taking seventeen credits. After that job, I took another management job at a retail store and worked thirty-five hours a week while taking eighteen credit semesters. During my junior and senior, I backed off the work a bit to focus more on school, but I was still holding two jobs, working thirty hours a week while taking full eighteen credit semesters.

I believe that working this amount has helped me to become the teacher that I am today. Not only do I use my time wisely, because it is so precious when you are working as much as I have, but I am very organized and disciplined. I keep a very strict schedule, which helps me with my planning and schoolwork.

By working so much, I have given myself the confidence that I can handle anything. If I can handle a fifty-hour work week, while student teaching, planning my solo weeks, house and dog sitting, I can do anything. Working has taught me the power of positive thinking and the fact that you can achieve anything that you set your mind to. I have built a strong work ethic, both from my family and my own experiences, which will help me to continue at full speed next year during my first year of full time teaching.

The final experience that has made me into the teacher that I am today is my involvement with Rising Stars Academy and what it stands for. Six years ago, my aunt moved to Florida in hopes of finding a better education for her son with Asperger’s syndrome. She found a small private school that worked wonders for him. After a year of teaching at this school, my aunt found herself at a crossroads and decided to open a school of her own. In January of 2005, Rising Stars Academy was born in a rented dance studio. My aunt took with her over half of the student population when she decided to go out on her own. Since that day, the school has grown by three hundred percent, with two graduates to date. This small school, for students with disabilities, caters to students grades K through 12 who find that the normal public school setting isn’t conducive to their learning.

Being involved with RSA has shaped me as a teacher because I value students with learning disabilities just as I would any other students. I find that I have a special connection with them and have the passion to help open doors for them. I believe that a lot of what I have become as a teacher is because if the positive impact I have seen the teachers at RSA have on their students. I have tried to bring their philosophy, that every star can shine, into my placements here at UVM, and make sure that all students, no matter their race, age, sex, disability, or creed, are educated in the most appropriate way.

When I started in the education program, it was my dream to move to Florida and take a position as a teacher at RSA. Now, four years later, my dreams are coming true. Thanks to all the amazing experiences I have had both inside and outside the classroom, I have the opportunity to fulfill my dream. Because of my experiences, with my family, my work, and with RSA, I have become a well-rounded teacher accepting a position at the school of my dreams for next year.

The greatest thing about the teaching profession is that I am presented with the chance to learn something new each and every day. With each new day and each new class of students, I will be giving a piece of myself to those students as I teach and mold them into independent creative thinkers, while at the same time, they will be giving me a piece of themselves and always teaching me something new.

Throughout my internships, I have grown so much as a teacher and as a person. I came into the education program knowing that I had a passion for teaching, but not knowing the first thing about how to teach. Four years of rigorous courses, endless lesson planning, and internships have brought me to this point; a point at which I feel prepared to enter the profession with confidence and armed with a set of skills and a wealth of knowledge that will allow me to teach my students in a way that would make all of my professors proud.

As a teacher, I will be a lifelong learner, reflecting on my teaching, and finding news ways to make my teaching better. I think that my ambition and passion will sustain my drive to always want better things for my students. The most excited part of the future for me is the prospect of learning the new ways of teaching as soon as they are presented. I find it fascinating to know that in just a few years, teaching will be revolutionized yet again. The fact that new ways of teaching are always presented is exciting to me because it means that there are always ways in which we as teachers can make our teaching better.

After completing reading on Aristotle and Plato, I have realized that education is foundational for life and that each and every person has a right to that. I have learned that students need an education that is suited to their needs, rather than the needs of their peers and the class as a whole. I always knew that I would strive for this as a teacher, and I am excited that a lot of the instruction that I have received has been on differentiation. Looking back on Plato and Aristotle's teaching, I think that they had differentiation down to a science a lot longer before it was commonplace in traditional classrooms. I believe that I am a lot like them because I believe in providing all students with a unique education specifically tailored to their personal interests, learning styles, and needs.

The Socratic teaching method calls for specific questioning strategies rather than the teaching because it within the answers to those questions that the students learn. Plato believed that a teacher should know his or her students well, which is shown in the strong belief of teachers getting to know their students and advocating for them. In my future classroom and those that I have had the privilege to work in, this has been the principle belief system in place. Each mentor teacher that I have had has taken the time to get to know her students and benefitted greatly from the relationships created. 

Looking back over my time in the Elementary Education program, an area of great improvement for me was my behavior management strategies. In my first two placements, I was afraid to discipline the students and tell them what I expected of them. When I arrived in my third placement, in a difficult school, I had no choice but to implement a sturdy behavior management system that the students valued and adhered to. From this point forward, I began using behavior management as a tool in the classroom to facilitate change in the students and to teach them about the expectations I have for them. Coming into my student teaching placement, I had lost touch with this confidence in myself because I had been out of the classroom for so long. I quickly found my way and implemented a system, Blue Ribbon Behavior, which set forth ground rules, had specific guidelines, specific rewards and logical consequences for inappropriate behavior. By the time my solo weeks came, the students respected me as a teacher and I hardly had to use a behavior management strategy.

A specific challenge that I will begin to work on right away is the ability to stand up for myself. It isn’t the fact that I don’t vocalize my opinions, but rather the fact that I don’t like people being unhappy with me and I’d rather not step on anyone’s toes. I have realized that I do need to vocalize my opinions more, because in the long run, I am the one who gets hurt.

Many of the other challenges that I have spoken about in other sections include the following: my over ambition in lesson planning, working with parents who are hesitant, creating a classroom environment that promotes all abilities of students and all types of learning, communicating with my team members, and being able to voice my opinions. I believe that a lot of these challenges are opportunities for lifelong learning. Others come with the experience of being in the classroom. I am excited to face these challenges and look forward to learning new ways of overcoming them.

I am a strong believer that everything happens for a reason and that there is an answer to each an every problem that you are faced with. All of the challenges that I have faced, and will continue to face, will one day work themselves out, by giving me a way to learn how to fix them, learn from them, and move on to teach about them.