My elementary school was like a second home to me. I was there before students were allowed inside the doors each morning, and stayed until most teachers had gone home each afternoon. My mom was a first-grade teacher there(today she is a Reading Recovery instructor...a program where she takes the lowest readers from K-2 classes and basically teaches them one-on-one to read and write). Yet, I couldn't get enough. At home, my sister and I often set up little classrooms and we took turns teaching pretend pupils geography and math lessons. I loved the school setting. My mom always tried to discourage my sister and I from the profession (she wanted us to go for something with more money involved), but deep down, I knew that she loved it. We saw her reach deep into her own pocketbook to buy things to enhance her classroom and supplies for her kids. Because I experienced first-hand the sacrifices teachers HAD to make in order to make their students successful, I learned to respect teachers at a young age. My mother might have complained about lesson plans, administration, and discipline problems, but she understood that teachers have the opportunity to touch lives and to make all the difference in the world of a child. She loved kids and she loved being a teacher, and it more than made up for the meager salary and minor details that weren't significant in the long run.

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It wasn't until my Junior year of high school that I thought I was being called into the profession of teaching. I had just returned home from an amazing summer of serving as a counselor and working with 4th-6th grade girls at a Christian camp outside of Asheboro, NC. That summer, as I taught Bible studies and got to care for those girls, I found that I, like my mother, loved impacting the lives of children.
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Here I am, a Sophomore at the university I always dreamed of attending, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I haved learned so much about myself in the past year...and so much more about the teacher and role model that I want to be one day. Its almost surreal that I will have my own classroom in three short years. My greatest goal for teaching is to help each child understand their value and the intelligence they posess. Right now, I am debating about whether I will be teaching in grades 4-5, or whether I will take a crazy leap and decide to teach middle school Language Arts. My main focus this semester is to sort out this little dilemma and learn more about the exciting, complex, ever-changing world of education. Here goes nothing... :)