“To teach is to touch lives forever.”  After I graduate from Georgia Southwestern, I want to touch children’s lives and help them grow.  I want to be the kind of teacher that is admired and respected for what she does.

I attended kindergarten through twelfth grade at Fullington Academy in Pinehurst.  During all four of my high school years, I tutored at the Learning Center on campus.  The Learning Center is a place where children with learning disabilities have their weaker and tougher classes.  They benefit from the Learning Center because there is usually no more than three children in a group.  Because there are not twenty kids in one classroom, there are fewer distractions for the kids to focus their attention on.  Also, the kids can go to the Learning Center for a quiet place to take their tests: a place free of distractions where the can concentrate solely on their test.

My decision to major in Early Childhood Education came from two main stems.  Both my mother and aunt are teachers.  Seeing what they do and how they touch children’s’ lives has always made me want to do the same thing.  The Learning Center at Fullington played the main role in me deciding what to do with the rest of my life.  Tutoring each day gave me a sense of satisfaction.  It got to the point where I looked forward to the class period in which I tutored.  Seeing a child’s eyes light up when he or she grasped a difficult concept made me realize my dream of following in my mother’s footsteps was coming true.  I also realized that I helped that child understand the particular concept.  I knew then that I wanted to do that professionally for the rest of my life.

For me, one of the most difficult parts of teaching will be my first year.  I will be the “new kid on the block” just starting out.  I am afraid that I will not know what to do or when to do it.  I have fears of people trying to run over me.  Basically, I am nervous about my entire first year.  But, like all other things, I will overcome my fears, rise to the occasion, and be the best teacher I can be.  I want to be liked by my students; but yet they will know my classroom is not a place to run wild.  I hope to also be admired by my fellow colleagues. 

I believe two of my strongest qualities that will help me to become a good teacher are my patience and my knowledge and understanding of the different levels of abilities that I will teach.  My patience will help me to not get upset with a child when he or she cannot grasp something like simple addition after we have gone over it time and time again.  My understanding and knowledge of learning disabilities and the various levels that I will come in contact with as a teacher will hopefully make me good at what I do.  At the Learning Center, I came in contact with different levels of ability and learning disabilities.  I have seen first hand how to help a learning disabled child learn.  Also, because I do not learn things as fast as others, I understand what a child goes through when trying their hardest to learn something that just does not click.  Growing up, I had teachers that said to come to them for help.  When I went to them for help, all they would do was fuss because I did not get it the first time.  They said I must not have been listening.  Because I went through this, I will not make my students feel like this.  Hopefully I will be a teacher in which her students want to come to for help.  Instead of fussing, I will work until the child understands what they need to know.

Teaching is a field that I will strive in, or die trying.  I want my students to remember me as a good and caring teacher for years to come, like I remember my favorite teacher.  More than anything, I want to touch my students’ lives forever.