Education Blog

Why I Want To Be A Teacher :

In kindergarten we were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. My response was, “A Teacher”. From grade one all through twelve, this remained my response. I found myself taking the characteristics of the teachers I enjoyed, and applying them to how I wanted to teach. I had some extremely influential teachers, and I believe it is because of the positive impact they each had, academically, socially, or physically, on my life that I want to follow in their footsteps even more. Although my degree is a Double Honours in Human Geography and English, I feel that I have much more to put forth than these two subject areas that have interested me most. I believe that a learning environment in Middle Schools also involves learning something about oneself in a time of the personal changes related to young adolescents. I want to help students learn academically, and I want to do so with the understanding that they are going through times of physical, intellectual, moral, psychological, and social-emotional development. Teaching is a job that I hear from other teachers, “I cannot believe I get paid for what I do” much more often than, “I don’t get paid enough for what I do”. I believe that we work to live, not live just to work, and I feel that as a teacher I would be living a rewarding life while working. I have gone through learning environments that focused on me, and achieving my personal bests. I am now ready to focus on “them”, my students, and help them to strive and achieve their own personal bests.

3 Things About Me:

1.) Throughout my life I have been active in volleyball, golf, softball, ringette, basketball, badminton, track and cross country. I am still active in most of these sports, and they are things that I see myself remaining active in all of my life. One way to do so would be through coaching, and I do not see myself as a teacher without being a coach of something as well. Some of my favorite teachers were the ones involved in my life through sports, or in some way outside of the classroom, and this is the type of teacher I want to be as well.

2.) In my last two years of school at the U of S, I tutored at an elementary school. I worked with kids from kindergarten to grade 6, making track of their progression. It was at this time that I remembered what it was like to be in those grades, and how difficult life was for some students, not just academically, but on the playground or at home as well. Some kids broke my heart with the stories they told me of being picked on, or about their home life, and it made me truly appreciate my parents and all the opportunities I had been given.

3.) I grew up in a household where I was pushed to succeed and achieve excellence, but with an identical twin sister right by my side. She pushed me much more in school and sports because I was always trying to excel more than her. However, I grew up having to open birthday presents back-to-back because they were the same thing, with the same friends and even with the same job during university. Moving the Kelowna from Saskatoon, was the first time in my life I finally felt like an individual, and where people got to know me for me, not just one of the twins. I love when people say, “Hi Michelle!” and not just, “Which one are you?”