My family has always been involved with and passionate about academia. My Grandfather was a fireman’s son and was the first in his family to go to college. When he arrived, he wanted to become a high school math teacher. After being told that an education degree would require five years of schooling, and another year of tuition to pay, he decided to go with chemical engineering; this is clearly quite the shift. He went on to become a chemical engineering professor and then the Vice President of Michigan Technological University. My Father is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and now is a professor for Central Michigan University. My Grandfather and Father have always inspired me and I have always admired their work. This admiration and respect led me to enroll in the College of Education at Michigan State University. I graduated in May of 2015, completed a full year for my teaching internship, and began my first teaching job in Charleston, South Carolina in the fall of 2016. I took an unconventional route by accepting a job at an alternative program to teach students who were expelled from other schools in the district. Needless to say, it was not easy nor was it what I expected I would be doing. Throughout my five years in the classroom I have learned that I have an affinity for teaching and building relationships with students, and I would like to continue my work in the classroom by teaching others how to teach. Moving forward, my first goal is to gain experience in a diverse group of teaching environments, my second is to become faculty at a college or university, and my third is to continue my education and research how to best teach the 21st century learner.
I have long had the aspiration to become an instructor at the collegiate level after having gained experience in the classroom. I wanted to make sure that I had experience in multiple environments and with multiple demographics. After having worked in three different schools, I decided to go back to school to begin my Master’s of Arts in Educational Technology; again at Michigan State University. I decided that while I worked on this, I would gain more experience in the classroom. As I near completion of my degree, I am even more confident that I would like to pursue teaching at the collegiate level. One of my previous coworkers has pursued the same goal, and I plan to talk with her about her experiences thus far because she is instructing at a college that I am interested in applying to. I have decided that at the end of the 2020-2021 school year, I am going to begin applying to colleges around the Charleston County area. I am most interested in The College of Charleston and teaching for their College of Education.
With a Master’s degree I could work for a college under the title of “instructor”. This is the next step towards achieving my second goal. I am also researching different programs to complete a Doctorate in Education. As I’ve mentioned, I have always been very invested in academia and hold education in high regard. Modeling the importance of education is a vital characteristic to have as a professor and I know that I could emulate that it is always important to continually educate yourself, regardless of your position or the topic. I have been looking at the Doctoral Programs at Michigan State University. I am not sure when I will decide to pursue this goal. This will be dependent on where the 2021-2022 academic year takes me.
Lastly, if and when I decide to get my Ph.D., I would like my research to center around how to most effectively educate the 21st century learner. The state of the education system now does not seem to be servicing the students as best it can. I am worried that we are not preparing students now to enter the workforce in the 21st century. So much has changed and I am very interested in working towards figuring out how to better educate the students we have in our classroom today. Problem solving and critical thinking skills seem to be dwindling and these are two of the most imperative skills to have today with the wealth of information at our fingertips. This research will be instrumental in preparing me to best teach future teachers, considering my aspirations to become a professor. I have been researching the Doctor of Educational Research Program through Michigan State University because it specifically states that throughout the program students will address problems within the field of education. All of my goals will require a lot of work and perseverance, but I am ready to delve in.