Core Values

As a future physical educator utilizing my values through teaching is going to be

extremely important to me. We set precedents, as teachers, in our students from their

very first day of school, starting in kindergarten all the way to commencement. We try

to impress upon our morals and ideals that we learned from the teachers, and

professors, we had growing up, and all of the other role models we look up to in our

lives. There are, and will be, an abundance of teachers who have very different sets of

values that they will bring to their classrooms that will create a contrasting impact on

an amplitude of future generations of students. I hope to be a teacher that changes the

lives of many for the better from what I value in life.

Work ethic has been a major part of my values throughout my lifetime. Starting

from a young age, I have put so much tenacity into everything I do. When it came to

school I put one hundred and ten percent into my studies and school work. I made

sure everything I worked on was done to the best of my ability and went above and

beyond, striving to do better and be better every day. Growing up I was diagnosed with

anxiety at a young age with many reading and literacy problems as well. I was put into

early morning programs to practice my reading skills, and in middle school was also

diagnosed with ADD. I am not trying to give my self excuses for sympathy, I wasn’t

medicated for these conditions, I want to express that through all of these set backs I

pushed through to get work done, get high honors, break records in my athletics, and

accomplish everything I set my mind to. I brought that work ethic to college, even after

being diagnosed with a chronic illness in my spring semester of freshman year, I have
pushed through with that as well. Trying to perform to the best of my ability in my

classes, my golf career, with this new, potentially detrimental, part of my life is a lot to

handle. If I keep up a strong work ethic in my professional career and spread that value

in my future students, hopefully they will feel the same self-accomplishment and good

virtue I feel on a daily basis.

Another value that I find to be of utmost importance would be compassion. I live

by this word in my professional and personal life. It means putting the needs of others

before yourself, in all situations. It means you look to carry kindness everywhere you go

and present all the love you have to everyone you can. I have done this all of my life,

and it is why I have so many close relationships today. I look to serve, as much as I can

and I want to do that for my future classes and colleagues. If I can make even the

smallest impact on someone’s life, that’s what I strive to do everyday. When I have a

classroom of my own, it will be one of my top priorities to make sure everyone feels

comfortable, cared for, and their concerns heard. If I give the same respect and

compassion I give to other professionals, and people in general around, me then I will

get that same respect back. I learned this from a teacher I observed in one of my

experience classes and I will take that with me into my own career some day.

Work ethic was introduced to me through watching my parents over the years.

My father would get up at 3 in the morning everyday to work as the executive chef at a

hospital near me, and they would have him do the job of five men because everyone

knew he valued perfection and hard work, and if he didn’t go over the top with

everything he made he wouldn’t be satisfied with himself. It came back to reward him

in the end because of how many people value his work over the years. He’s been at
this hospital for 41 years now, bringing people fantastic meals on a daily basis, working

on holidays where he could be with us but instead he serves the sick, and I admire

everything he has done to excel in life and I wanted to take on that life skill to better my

future. As for my mother, she is a social worker with adaptive students in a BOCES

program on Long Island, and as of right now she is working with students who have

emotional and behavioral issues. In the past she has worked with students all over the

autism spectrum, which entails a lot of hard work. With each new student came a new

list of characteristics of the student, and IEP, and more that she would have to make

relationships with and study so she could see improvement in her students in all

aspects of their education, emotions, behavior, and thinking process. She has taken

every class she can to improve her own education so she can be the best at her

profession. She is praised by her co-workers all the time by how hard she works, how

kind-hearted she is, and how she never gives up on anyone. She works to help her

students as much as possible, and when I become a teacher I want to do that for my

students as well. She has been doing this for twenty years, and many students she’s

had remember all that she has done for them and thank her over and over again for her

help to this day, which is amazing to see.

Externally, through a positive structure of policies at my school district, good

things came to those who worked hard. If you worked to detail your work to the fullest,

study till your brain was fried, and just put one hundred and ten percent into every

class, you would be recognized through honors and a high honors system, along with

National Honors Society. And being able to accomplish those great entities made me

feel amazing, which encouraged me to work even harder. The same goes for athletics.
If you work hard and practice day in and day out you will see great results, which in

turn will gain you more accomplishments.

Out of a number of value orientations in curriculum development, I am most

comfortable with self-actualization. This calls to the ability and potential of the

students, and I believe by encouraging our students to find themselves and live up to

their best self only good can come from that teaching style. It involves a huge focus on

enabling the student to think for themselves, set their own personal goals, and reflect

on those goals, which in turn demonstrates growth in the student’s abilities affectively

and a kind of self-understanding. Psychomotor wise, it is a more sport-oriented and

fitness task style of teaching. Ultimately, this way of teaching will mold my students to

become young, bright, understanding individuals that I will be so proud to have taught.