I believe I am an ideal candidate for this scholarship because I truly love teaching, and I very passionately want to be an educator. I want to teach English in a non English speaking country, but honestly I would be perfectly okay with teaching any subject in any place. I plan to make a positive impact by giving my future students a safe space to exist, make mistakes, and learn. I want to be the kind of teacher that made a huge impact on my life and who I am: An understanding, empathetic, and supportive teacher. Having teachers like that made me feel better about being myself, especially as a student that struggled with mental health issues and has an invisible disability. The importance of education can not be understated. It’s such an integral part of life that there are laws requiring all children to go to school, and not sending your child to school is considered neglect. Every single career requires education, even if it’s just basic education. One challenge I’ve faced in my education is dealing with the death of my best friend in 4th grade. The first day of 4th grade I walked into my elementary school excited to see who I considered my best friend, Bryan Perdomo-Henriquez. I went to class and didn’t see him, so I waited and looked around to find him. Soon my school called an assembly and they handed every student a letter to give to our parents that said my best friend had been hit by a car and died about a week earlier. His death was very hard on me and I didn’t go to school for two weeks, but when I did come back my teacher was very compassionate and made it easier for me to continue learning. Another challenge I’ve faced is being a student with ADHD. I wasn’t diagnosed until middle school and it was very hard to focus on my schoolwork until then. I would get in trouble for moving too much, for going non verbal, for not doing my work, and I always felt guilty that the other students could listen, but I couldn’t. Blaming myself made it even harder to learn due to the emotional distress I was under trying not to get in trouble anymore. After I got diagnosed, got a 504, and started on ADHD medication I flourished. It was such a huge help and the struggle of learning before my diagnosis made everything feel even easier once I was given the accommodations I need. One major issue affecting education is money. Many schools are severely underfunded, so they don’t have the money to pay teachers, keep up with building repairs and maintenance, provide quality food and supplies for the students, and more. It impacted my desire to become a teacher by reinforcing my belief that teachers are needed now more than ever. Imagining how many kids are receiving lackluster education, or no education at all, when others or myself could fill the gaps in school staff is what solidified my desire to become an educator.

I have hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue that affects every part of my body. It’s not inherently a disability, but in severe cases it is. The chronic pain, fatigue, and joint instability I experience on a daily basis puts me in the severe category. I have chronic pain in my feet, ankles, legs, hips, back, neck, shoulders, and wrists. I have never gone a single day without feeling pain in one of those areas, and I didn’t know that wasn’t normal. Since mine is an invisible disability I was always told to just ‘suck it up’ when my knees would be in so much pain I couldn’t walk properly, when my ankles would dislocate and pop back into place with every few steps, when I got so dizzy out of nowhere that my vision blacked for a few seconds, and when my whole body ached. The person speaking didn’t see it happening, so they assumed I was just dramatic or lying. For 17 years I lived with a disability without knowing why it was so hard for me do things everyone else found so easy. Whenever I tell someone I am disabled they tend to accuse me of lying, of being an attention seeker or a pick me. They tell me I’m not because it’s not obvious or something they can see. The times my disability is visible (AKA when my limbs dislocate or I pass out) they don’t see it as a part of my disability, if they did they would have to admit I am disabled. Instead they treat it as a separate issue, something that happens to people sometimes, with no ties to the genetic disorder even though two of the biggest aspects of hEDS is joint instability and fatigue, the reason why my shoulders and ankles pop out of place so often or I fall unconscious for no apparent reason. After speaking to a doctor that specializes in EDS and meeting others with disabilities, specifically invisible disabilities, I have become much more comfortable asking for accommodations. I am working on getting accommodations for school such as an elevator pass, being allowed to type assignments since writing is often very hard for me, and the ability to lay in the nurses office when needed so I don’t pass out in class. In addition I have accepted that my disorder isn’t something I have to ignore. I keep reminding myself that just because others don’t see it or don’t accept it doesn’t mean I am not physically disabled and that it’s okay to be disabled. I used to hate how weak or humiliated I felt when everyone could do something I couldn’t. But now I know my disability is not something to be ashamed of or hate, it’s a central part of who I am.

I was born into a privileged family that soon after lost most of our savings due to medical bills after my two sisters and I had cardiac complications: Only one half of my heart was growing properly, my oldest sister was born with a hole in her heart that required frequent check ins, and my other older sister had Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. Then my grandmother got terminal cancer and my mom took the brunt of her medical bills, and the living expenses for her two younger siblings. After my grandmother’s death my sisters, my mother, and I had to move from California back to my mother’s home state, Virginia, and we restarted across the country as a low income family. For years my main source of food was the donations to my family from my church, free school lunch, and whatever food was cheap enough to afford on my mother’s salary. While my father stayed in California and used his income mainly to support his alcoholic lifestyle (He has since gone to rehab and is sober) my mother did as much as she possibly could to give us stable, safe lives. She worked up to 13 hour shifts, between 5 and 8 days straight, at a hospital as a Nurse Care Practitioner just to scrape up enough money to get us birthday gifts or new shoes after we grew out of our other pairs. My mother got a new job about two years ago with a higher salary, but we still struggle with bills and life expenses. Last school year I took an economics and personal finance course at Norview that taught me a lot about good financial decisions. At the end of the school year I scored a 98% on my Wise test, only getting one question wrong. Another way I learned about finance was through my uncle, who teaches personal finance classes at my church. The class I took taught me about a lot of different topics, but only on the basic level. My uncle was the one who went in depth to help me truly understand things like Roth IRA’s, tax forms, bank accounts, and more. I plan to use what I learned in my finance class, and the advice of my uncle to navigate the complicated process of being financially responsible. I am always learning and always willing to use what I’ve learned to better my financial situation. I hope to one day become like my uncle, more than just financially stable and responsible, but someone who can help others reach financial literacy and their financial goals.