Growing and Learning

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Ever since I have been an elementary school student, I have always wanted to be a teacher. I decided that I wanted to be a great as my fifth grade teacher; she became my inspiration all the way through high school. Beginning my college classes and getting involved in my placements was further confirmation that I wanted to continue forward with teaching.

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When I graduated with my teaching certificate, my main goal was to become an elementary school teacher. I finally had the opportunity to co-teach a kindergarten class and learned that they were a little too dependent for my taste. During this time, I decided to begin my Master of Arts in Education Degree (MAED) program with Michigan State. I was also the responsible for English Language Development (ELD) interventions with our kindergarten students. I really loved working one-on-one with kids and decided to focus on literacy for my masters. My work with my ELD students developed a passion to focus on literacy.

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It felt like I was going full circle when I decided to study literacy since I had been placed in a reading intervention class in first grade. After realizing that I had that passion, my new goal was to become a reading specialist and help kids learn to love reading; my time with the reading specialist when I was young was life changing.

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About a year after I decided I was going to do after getting my master's degree in literacy, I was hired into a middle school English position. About half way into the position, I fell in love with the job! I found a special place in my heart for that age group and the things that I could do with the curriculum. I now wondered if I still wanted to keep my goal as a reading specialist or to continue as an English teacher and use my literacy focus for that.

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I could see that I was growing comfortable with the curriculum and was making it my own. I have surprised myself by seeing what creative ways I bring literature to life and how I have tried to make my teaching material come to life for my students. Who knew that I would try to find ways to make grammar fun? Or relate it to math? My classes I have taken during my masters have helped me to think of literature and writing in a new way, which confirmed my slight shift in goals; I wanted to focus on improving my literacy instruction at the middle school grade level instead of working to be a literacy specialist.

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While I have changed my goals from initially wanting to be an elementary teacher to reading specialist to a middle school English teacher, I have kept the heart of my goal the same, to help students love to read. As my experiences in the classroom have changed, I have also found my goals shifting to follow suit. The beauty of teaching is that we are constantly shifting and learning as we grow.