Who I am

I don't know exactly when I started to want to become a teacher, but I'm pretty sure it was before I even had one. From Nursery school on I would take home my assignments, erase or white out the work I'd done, photocopy them on my dad's Xerox machine, and make my friends and family "play school." This was a game I took very seriously.

As I got older, the games lessened, but I had many teachers who influenced my aspirations. In high school I was the girl that the nerdy kids wouldn't even hang out with. I was bullied badly. This only encouraged my goal to be a teacher, because we had many teachers in our school that looked the other way at times like these, or even participated, and I was determined not to be one of them. I had one teacher who never allowed it in his classroom, was always there to listen, and played chess with me and let me read his personal books of poetry. I don't remember much of what Mr. Bierling taught me, but it is probable that he is one of the reasons I didn't end up on the ten o'clock news, like so many other bullied kids of my generation.

Unlike Mr. Bierling, the Spanish teacher and Economics teacher in my school pretty much encouraged the bullies to pick on the less fortunate or less popular students, and instead of letting this dampen my spirits, I told myself if I became a teacher, then my students wouldn't have to deal with teachers who were unfair or unkind in that way.

In high school, I taught Sunday School at the local Presbyterian church, and after I received my Associates in the Humanities, I was a teacher's assistant in a nursery school classroom. These experiences only added to my desire to work with children, but helped me to realize I was much better at getting across to junior high and high school students, rather than little kids.

I took a break from college when I got married, but it was my husband who convinced me to go back. At this point I had started to doubt my ability to be a good teacher, and he really pushed me not to run away from it. Throughout high school and early college, I was torn between English, Spanish and History. I knew I wanted to teach, but I really didn't care what I taught. When I finally got to Lyon College, it was there that Dr. Ronald Boling and Dr. Helen Robbins helped me to see the depth of the English language and just how much fun interpreting literature could be.

I have been influenced by many teachers, both in what I want to emulate and what I definitely do not want to mimic, but my high school experience, while extremely negative, probably had the most impact on my life because it showed me just how big of a difference one person can make, and helped me to realize that I can be that one person for someone else's child.