My first teaching memory was in sixth grade. My best friend Julie and I decided that we were mature enough to "teach" the kindergarten Sunday School, with the helpful "supervision" of our mothers. I remember planning craft ideas and reading stories. We lead games and told tales from the Bible. I think it was at this moment that I decided I had found my life long career-teaching.
Fast Forward to Jr. High. I had joined the CADA team, for student leaders and helped organize outreach after outreach with our small group. We adopted a family at Christmas time and delivered presents. At Easter, I dressed up as the Easter Bunny (yes, full bunny suit) and hopped around the garden at a continuation day care for teen moms, planting plastic eggs and posing for pictures. I loved the feeling of helping out these students and their families. I received inner rewards from each smile. Also in Jr. High, I was in the radio broadcasting elective and took on a radio-journeying project interviewing teen gang members. I thought myself so daring talking to these students, seeking the answer to my questions, making unlikly friends along the way. This expand my career goal pat teaching and specified to teaching hard to reach students through building relationships.
Fast Forward again: High School. My elective of choice: Childhood development. This allowed me to grab some ECE units from Delta College and leave school to be a teacher's aide 3 times a week in a fourth grade classroom, where I mostly graded papers, read island of Blue Dolphins and tutored the students at Recess. In our classroom we designed lesson plans for preschool classes and made craft ideas to go along with specific themes. In this class my focus narrowed to upper elementary at minimum.
College to me was a one stop shop. Get in, get my degree and get out with little to no distractions. In retrospect I think I missed out on a huge social aspect as I joined NO sororities, attended no College sports and went to NO other activities. In fact in my free time I volunteered at a local church teaching a puppeteers course to upper elementary students, taught the Pre-K Sunday School class and was a leader for the youth group. (off note truth:I have no friendships from college, any long standing friendships were made in High school or earlier....) I enjoyed my times, and took some of the puppet scripts I wrote on the road to Indian Reservations in Arizona and Nevada on mission trips. In 2004 I was distracted from my goal short-term-got married and resumed my BA completion in the Spring of '05.
My first year married I worked to jobs and commuted to school full time. My jobs: Pre-K teacher at Tiny Tot's under the direction of my beloved Auntie Recia, and Birthday Party coordinator at GYMBOREE, with the occasional sub class in Pleasanton.
After completing my final course at CSUEB, formerly known as CSUH (changed my last semester) I sat down in my home office and typed out my resume ready to apply for a new and long time coveted career: Teaching. As I applied for several positions at private schools (as I still needed to complete my credential) I remember a still quiet voice saying : "I did not train you to make good people, I trained you to make disciples of me." So I threw out all but one application. Our church was establishing a new school, this school was in its second year. I called my old mentor Mrs. Harper and inquired about open positions, she scheduled me for an informal interview the following day where I was hired on the spot.
During the interview, I remember her asking me what grade I wanted as there were several openings: Kindergarten, Sixth Grade or 7th/8th Grade Math and Science. I was going back and forth between the last two as I knew, repeat KNEW, I did not want to teach Kindergarten. In choosing the 7th/8th graders I knew I had a challenge ahead of me as I was not the most math-e-matically inclined. IN the end I loved it and taught this for 2 years before consolidating to just science as the 6th grade joined the program.
In the last year I began to feel resolved in going back to school and in 2009 completed my teaching credential depitte the challenges and distractions of working full time, fostering two daughters,caring for my surgically disabled husband and giving birth to my first born.
In 2010 I was thrown for a loop and tossed out of my acclimated middle school routine and into a now foreign Kindergarten regiment. I feel as though I have done Kindergarten justice with plenty of stories, arts and crafts, my students ar reading (yes all of them) and adding and subtracting...meeting all their requirements. Saying all this, I Love my students but I am resolved to say that I officially do not feel that kindergarten is for me. So in January 2010 i completed my coursework for my long awaited secondary credential and told my job my plan to leave FBCS after 6 years of dedication.
As I embark on the next journey I am excited and nervous and I know that it has been a process so far, but in reality my career is only beginning....
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