My name is Ashanti Cooper. I’m 23 years old, and I was born and raised in Morrilton, Arkansas. I am the first generation to go to college in my family. Ever since I was in high school, I always knew I wanted to make a difference in the educational world, so I took a leap and started my educational journey at the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton, where I got my associate's degree in early childhood education. Now I’m in the University of the Cumberlands program getting my B.S. in interdisciplinary early childhood education. The way I plan to make a positive impact on the world in my educational career is by being fully and unapologetically me. Every day I can go into the classroom and just be myself. Having my authentic self can create ripples that reach far beyond my classroom walls. When I show up, I want to show up with my passions and my quirks so I can show them that being you is never wrong. Through my educational career I have learned that it’s important to just be yourself and let your light shine in the educational world. I want to be able to be real and have a real human experience that brings engagement and have other people learn and get out of their bubble to be what they can be in the educational world. I want to be able to build a community with educators who understand and teach each other when it’s needed. who learn from each other. I want to make an impact in the educational world where I can create spaces big enough for other teachers who need that space. I want to build connections that will show others in the field to build connections with each other so that suddenly the teaching world starts to shift to something good. I want my classroom to be and feel like a community, a space where others can truly be themselves because I wasn't afraid to be myself in the classroom and out of the classroom. I wouldn't just want to be a teacher for my students, parents, and co-workers; I want to be a force like a wave that doesn't ask for permission but has its own strength and reshapes. I never want to try and just be inspirational for others, but I want to be able to truly be me with my presence, my authenticity, and my passion because Parents notice it, students feel it, and colleagues sense it.

Hi! My name is Ashanti Cooper, and I have lived in Morrilton, Arkansas, my whole life. I go to the University of Arkansas Community College, and I'm a sophomore this year. When I was in high school, I got suspended for my junior high year. I felt like a lost teenager who did not have anyone to uplift me for academic success. Even though I had parents, they weren’t encouraging, but they thrived on being negative. My whole life as a high school teen, I had only one teacher who lifted me up academically. I didn’t take school seriously, and I didn’t think I had it in me to be anything great. After I got suspended, I felt down and not encouraged enough to get up and go to school. I felt like I was not good enough after and that I set myself up for failure after I got suspended because that’s what my parents saw and said. After feeling like I had ruined my life and couldn’t continue, I picked myself back up because one teacher uplifted me with encouraging words. She gave me an emotional story of her daughter in college going through depression, not doing her school work, and finally realizing that she needed help and encouragement and prospering when that encouragement from others kicked in. It boosted my academic performance in my junior year and senior year. This educational teacher thrived on helping her students become the best versions of themselves, and she helped me become mine. This day going forward, I remember and take her strength as a teacher, her strength as an uplifting person to others, and her strength to tell children who feel like failures that they can be more than what they think they are by their mistakes with me into the teaching system. Because of her kind soul, she fixed me as someone who wants to encourage children as a teacher. Her passion to help others helped me realize that children need someone who is going to encourage strength and resilience, not failure and mistakes. I want to be a teacher who does not give up on her students like my teacher in high school did with me and encourages my students to be their best scholarly selves, no matter their mistakes. My mistake did not make me a failure and did not ruin my life, but it made me more encouraging to myself to keep pursuing to do better, aim high, and help students realize the same for themselves.

College is a hard time for me because I feel like I go through many different emotions. I have a part of me that feels like I should stay, another part that wants to quit, and another part that doesn’t see the opportunity I should be getting like other people who are in this field and who do not have degrees. I went through a lot with my parents, who always tore me down and never lifted me up once. They belittled me and it just made me see them as bad parents who did not ever say one word of congratulations on big or small events that I found important. With how much they constantly talked bad about me and focused on what I did wrong and never on what I did right, those things helped me in my upbringing and I overcame that by telling myself I would be the educator that the children needed. I always told myself that I would not focus on what harsh words they say because I think positively first and will always be the first. Their parenting style that they constantly do is not a parenting style that no one should be enduring. They made me want to become an educator because seeing them parent me made me think of all the children who grow up and are constantly being told what they do wrong and not focused on the positive things they do right. Mistakes are mistakes and we learn from them, but when you constantly make a child feel bad for what they did, that emotionally sticks with them, which is why I do watch what I say when I speak to anyone, including a child. They made me into someone that wants to be better than them in any way possible. This challenge of my life not getting recognition from them but constantly from other people I don’t know feels emotionally damaging to me because I am working really hard towards my goal and where I want to be in the educational field, and with how damaging they are to me, I think about how there is a life full of children like me getting constantly bashed for their mistakes, and it's been an ongoing thing since I was a child. It’s not an easy process with parents like this, but I always think positively about myself and the path I’m taking in education, even if I do not get positive feelings from them.

Well! My name is Ashanti Cooper and I grew up in Morrilton, AR. I did choir as my favorite class and subject in high school. I hung out with my cousin and my friends while we did fun active things in school and out of school. I graduated from high school in 2021 with an honors cord in family and consumer sciences. My other honors cord came from school counts for outstanding progress I showed through my 4 years of high school. I attended UACCM in August 2021 for early childhood development, where I received my certificate of proficiency in 2022. I will be going back to UACCM in 2022 to receive my associate's degree. I have thought about my growth from high school to now and I feel happy knowing that I am making myself someone who cares about the world of early education teaching. I know and am confident that I will make a great teacher in the near future, and I’m so excited. I have lived here my whole life with my mom, dad, and five sisters. I also have one sister and three brothers. I did upward cheer for 2 years at the ages of 11 and 12, which I really enjoyed because we would always do our practices across the street in another building from the place we cheered the boys in. My mom named me after a famous singer and actress because she thought the name was beautiful, so she went with Ashanti for me. In 5th grade, I struggled with doing math and did not understand it very well, so I had to switch to another classroom to be a placement for a disability for math. In my 10th grade year, I signed out of placement in disability for math and started taking algebra. Algebra was an easy class for me and I understood it very well because of the help I got and the different techniques you could do to get the right answer. I went through speech therapy my whole life growing up until I checked out of it my senior year. I was never on the wild side or a talkative person to be around, so I always kept to myself, but I observed everyone else closely. I plan to make a positive impact on the world by being like the two teachers who helped me survive during my hard time in high school when I made a mistake and my parents belittled me about it every second they could. In high school, I was depressed and couldn’t bear to get myself to go to school. Two teachers helped me out of that. I can not be more thankful for both of them during that time because I needed their emotional support to get me out of that struggle and where I am now. I want to take my choir teachers' charismatic energy and my English teachers' emotional support and bring it with me into the world of teaching children. I want to be a future educator who supports and loves her students no matter the mistakes they make. I want to love the children who come in looking for love there because they don’t get it outside of school. I want to love the kids who do get love outside of school. I want to leave an impact on the children I teach because they will need someone to remember, so when they leave they will know they had someone that cared about them, loved them, didn’t compare them to one another, and didn’t bash them for their mistakes.

When I was in high school, my junior year was starting to feel rough because I mad a bad choice. Those bad choices brought me down, but two high school teachers lifted that bad choice out of my head. I had a rough time and did not feel like I could go to my parents because they always belittled me for everything that I did when I was just a young teenager. I felt like those harsh words put me down and I started struggling not even wanting to go back to school. My English teacher, who was part of the high school but I did not have her for any of my classes, helped me so much with her emotional support and kind words because she did not judge me one time when I made one mistake. I could go to her and talk with her and she helped me get into the school I am in now and I could not be more grateful to her every time I go to school and see how far I’ve come. She made a positive impact on me and I wish I could see her and tell her how much I love her and am thankful that she was the one there beside me when I was struggling and needed someone to tell me that everything would be ok. My choir teacher helped me be happy with just being charismatic and full of loving energy. That took my mind off of the mistake I thought would be me forever. She adored each of her students because we were all unique, and she admired that.That mistake helped me grow so much to where I am now. I could not be more thankful or thank those two teachers enough. I fell into early childhood education because of those two teachers who did nothing but be the best they could and not judge because they knew young teenagers made mistakes. I want to be like the two teachers who helped me realize that I have a heart for education just like them, and with that, I want to teach and be there for the future kids I have. I am so appreciative of where I am now because of kindness. I want to make a positive impact on my career and the world by welcoming the children I have with love because they come in having a bad morning. I want to be an educator for kids who feel like they do not get enough love at home and come to school looking for it. I want to be an educator for the children who were thought of as hard to deal with because they had developmental disabilities, and I will love and teach them too. I do not teach just because I just love children, but I want to make and leave an impactful spot for the children I teach. I want to be the two high school teachers in my teaching career who do not bring me down because I was a wild young teen that made a mistake, which that mistake never and should never define me. Children are going to make mistakes in the classroom. It’s ok to come to me for emotional support because I know they will need it just as I did in high school. I want to be an impactful, positive teacher to let them know that it is OK to make mistakes, start a new career, and that I will never judge them based on the bad decisions that they make as children in class.