Education has always been both a valuable and appealing aspect of my life. We were trained in its importance early on by my father, who barely had an eighth grade education, and had to work two to three jobs at a time to make ends meet, along with his desire for us to have a better quality of life than he had. School was the first word he wanted us to learn. Throughout both my elementary and high school education, my teachers were always my biggest heroes, and my aspiration was to become one of them.
I entered college as an Education major, but due to various reasons, changed over in my second year. One discouraging factor of that time, was that there was an overabudance of graduates going into the teaching career, and not a lot of jobs available. Additionally, I became interested in doing Social Work because of the tremendous amount of problems going on at that time. I was looking at the world through rose-colored glasses and believed I was going to save the world from becoming a Welfare state. I guess it was a sign of the times. During both High school and college, I continually held a corporate part time job including working full time in the summers. This was also greatly influenced by my father's wish for us to learn independence and the value of hard work and the dollar. Disappointed by the job prospects of a Social work position (which didn't seem able to pay the bills), upon my college graduation, I remained in a corporate position, while I continued additional course work at night.
I did not want my mind to get lazy. I did voluntary substitute teaching in our local private schools, volunteer work with the Association for Retarded Citizens, and got involved with Literacy volunteers of America for over a year. Now, here I was, several years later, with the same desire to teach.
Throughout my corporate career, my desire to train and teach was demonstrated in the day to day middle management environment, as well as specific programs that I had gotten involved with. For example, I was a corporate liaison with the local high school Cooperative Education and Learning programs. I was also the catalyst in starting up distance, post secondary education for employees with children, whose lives had never given them the opportunity to go to college. This proved to be very rewarding for all involved. My personal satisfaction of these programs, coupled with an undying regard for children and their welfare brought me to a late, but ardent realization.
Along with the rewarding experiences, I have found in teaching, I now bring the additional work ethic and skills in technology and presentation I had gathered in the corporate environment. I also believe that the organizational skills I had learned have enhanced my fitness for teaching children to be successful when they are ready to go out into the real world. Believe me when I say that teaching is a very different career now than it was when I was in school, yet I was still anxious to be a part of it, and it a strong part of my life.
I speak of educating children from both my heart and my mind, which no teacher should be without. Finally the biggest hero in my life, my Dad, is based on what he did. At age fifty-six, there was a Vocational Technical School opening up in the county he lived in, and he was offered a position, if he returned to school. He quit the job he had been doing his whole life, a graphic printer, and went back to school, obtained his GED, and went to college for his Associate's Degree in Vocational Teaching. This accomplishment and the years of experience in his field made u for the rest. It also made my mother a nervous wreck. He was a teacher of a trade to Special Needs students the best and last ten years of his life.
No wonder, the first day I walked into a classroom full of students was the best day of mine!
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