Choosing a path in life is not easy, especially when you are 18 years old.

How

can you fully understand your own personal motivations and value systems when

you’re little more than a child? I certainly did not know or understand what drove

me as a college freshman at UNLV (University of Nevada-Las Vegas), and my work

ethic and motivation reflected this lack of purpose. For too long, I was driven by

fear, the fear of being a failure, the fear of not having enough, the fear of what other

people think. And ten years later, I look back at my educational journey and realize

the things I feared the most had already come true. In the ten years that have passed

since I graduated high school, I’ve started college, quit going to college, worked six

different jobs, started college again, and gained a perspective which has empowered

me and provided me with the inspiration to choose a career in education.

I’ve been in the classroom longer than I can walk and talk. You see my

mother has been a teacher for nearly 30 years. The classroom has long been a place

where I felt comfortable. After each day in high school, I would take the school bus

to my mom’s elementary school and contribute what little I could to her classroom.

Eventually, I found myself helping other teachers and even tutoring students who

needed help learning how to read. I’ve known for a long time teaching is something I

could do and potentially do well. But like too many naïve teenagers, I decided that I

didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of my parents and chose to try and discover a

path of my own.

That decision was driven in part by the egotistical pride of an eighteen year

old but it was also driven by the fear that I mentioned earlier. To be completely

transparent, I took the school bus to my mom’s school because we couldn’t afford to
buy me a car and I needed a ride home, not because I was service-minded. It turns

out that raising three children on a teacher’s salary is not an easy thing to do. While

my siblings and I never went without, the stress of not having enough money was

ever-present in our lives. I saw the credit card bills on the counter and watched the

buyers rummage through our home when we were forced to short-sell during the

great recession. Each special occasion or expense required a level of consideration

and exacted a stress, that even as a child, I wasn’t comfortable with. And so I chose

to blaze my own path, armed with little more than fear.

The aforementioned fears contributed to a paralysis that led me out of UNLV

and off of what some would consider a typical educational path. And the things that

I’ve seen along my path through the working class have truly shocked and saddened

me. When I was eighteen, I made pizzas at Pizza Hut and saw adults struggle with

the circumstances and effects of poverty they were born into. I watched my

management team manipulate schedules to avoid having to provide employees with

healthcare. When I was twenty, I became a lifeguard and made friends who were

capable and intelligent, but didn’t think school was achievable. Undaunted, I took a

job as a front desk agent on the Las Vegas Strip where I was once again confronted

with a business that failed to provide large swaths of their employees with health

insurance. One person that I recall specifically couldn’t afford his allergy medication

but still showed up with a positive attitude and a stuffy nose. Eventually, I moved up

the chain and found myself working on the organization of multi-million dollar

conventions. While my labor contributed to the billion dollar profits of my

employer, my peers struggled to make ends meet, couldn’t afford childcare, and
some couldn’t afford to retire. I was jumping through corporate hoops that only

served to enrich executives and stockholders I never met. Ten years in the work

force and I hadn’t found my purpose or motivation, only more disillusionment. How

could I continue on a career path that I found to be morally and ethically bankrupt?

Upon considering my place in the world and the things I value as a 27 year old, I

circled back to my mother. My mother, who dedicated her life to public service in

education, contributed more to her community than she took, and could reflect on

her career knowing what she did meant something.

These experiences outline the motivations that led me to education but they

also frame my educational philosophy. Hearing and reading about the inequities in

our society is one thing, coming face-to-face with them is another. And perhaps it is

my wide-eyed naivety but I want to contribute to the shaping of young minds that

are empowered and assured of their own dignity. This philosophy on education falls

within the “social reconstructionism” view of education. The traditional perspective

on this philosophy is that it is one, which affords students the latitude to evaluate

issues in the community around them, placing a higher regard on student-influenced

teaching and modern works. However, I feel as though the connotation of social

reconstructionism is that one who believes in this philosophy will cast aside the

everlasting wisdom of classic works and historic events. I am categorically not in

favor of casting aside whatever wisdom we can glean from our past. While my

philosophy certainly aims to familiarize students with the inequities in the world

around them, I believe we must build on the indispensible wisdom of works and

thinkers that came before us. For all of our society’s faults, we are lucky enough to
live in a place that has been shaped by some of the greatest fighters for equality the

world has ever seen. Our founding creed that all men are created equal has lent

itself to some of the most dynamic thinkers and works that are worthy of our

attention. These historic works allow us to contextualize the world around us and

understand the foundations of our society so that we may build upon them and

move forward. It is the wisdom of our history, which emboldens me today and

informs my perspective on education. It is our slow, backbreaking advance towards

equality that teaches me that equality is worth fighting for and to me, that fight

begins in the classroom.

Perhaps it is cliché to say, but at it’s best our education system can be the

Great Equalizer and I will strive for nothing less. To do so would be a disservice to

all the people who have fought for equal access to education throughout our history.

And that’s not to say that I will be perfect, there will undoubtedly be missteps in my

career. Although I am well intentioned, I am sure I harbor internal biases that are

still unknown to me. I understand that my experiences, which have constructed my

perspective and learning style, will differ from those of my students. And I know

that there will be bad days. But ten years from now, when I’ve taught a thousand

students and variations of the same lessons five times a day, ten years in a row, it

will be my experiences that inspire me to fight through the mundane to help young

minds. Although teaching may someday become ordinary to me, the lessons taught

within the classroom and the environments we create will be foundational, core

experiences for students that shape their lives forever. The weight of this

responsibility is not lost on me. Young people may someday enter my classroom
with identities and perspectives that I don’t understand, but my charge as a teacher

will remain unchanged. Whereas I once had selfish fears that centered around my

own status in life, today I fear the stifling of young minds due to circumstances

beyond their control and the lottery of birth.

Teachers are often given sideline seats to the inequities of our society.

Concepts of social injustice, which may seem abstract to some, will be born out

before my own eyes as a teacher and I will be asked to rectify them as best I can.

What an imposing charge and powerful motivation that must be. Successfully

performing these duties will require an open mind and a varied pedagogy to engage

exceptional learners and students with different learning styles. Further, your

pedagogy must be such that you are engaging with students on a level they

understand but also challenging them to look beyond the lesson at hand, asking

them to read between the lines instead of just turning the page. Additionally, your

pedagogy must shift and adjust so that you may engage each new generation of

students. For example, teachers who got their start in the nineties now exclusively

teach virtually in a pandemic with technology that didn’t exist when their careers

began. Although it may seem paradoxical, the best teachers are those who are

committed, lifelong learners themselves.

It’s difficult to have an understanding of exactly what your pedagogy will

look like when you’ve only just begun your journey as a hopeful educator. When you

read about varied learning styles, including bodily-kinesthetic or musical, trying to

visualize how you could incorporate them into an English or Math class can seem

overwhelming. Developing a sufficiently varied pedagogy is easier said than done

but I’ve already learned a great deal from the short time I’ve spent in the virtual

classroom through our shadowing program. Through our shadowing program, I’ve

seen students create info-graphics about a story they read instead of writing an

essay and create “sketch notes”. I discussed allowing students to act out scenes from

a book or play as another way of engaging with a story with the teacher I am

shadowing. And I recall my English 101 class at UNLV where the professor asked us

to consider the claims and supporting details of various songs as another way of

learning how analyze claim statements. It is this type of varied instruction that will

hopefully engage each student and craft well-rounded learners.

Teaching is a tightrope routine where teachers are asked to balance a

multitude of forces but when the sun sets on their careers, they can reflect on them

knowing they walked a meaningful path and I truly hope that I am lucky enough to

do the same. So for now, I will charge ahead with that goal in mind, throwing myself

into my schooling. And along my path, there will be landmarks that I hit like

graduation and student teaching but how will I know if I’ve achieved my goal of

becoming a great teacher? Surely I won’t be fitted for a Hall of Fame jacket and my

name won’t be hanging from the rafters. What I know is this: I have chosen this path

and I will relish the opportunity to become a positive force that contributes to the

betterment of my community.