I am Katelyn Gross and I was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I just graduated from Chattanooga Christian School and I am so excited to attend The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. I plan to make a positive impact on the world through my career of by just being a light to everyone that I interact with. I plan on majoring in Elementary Education and getting my masters in Special Education. I love children and have a desire to make an impact in children’s lives especially because I honestly never really got that, mainly in elementary school. My true desire is to work in a public school because I love to interact in different backgrounds. I know from experience of growing up in a public school that kids have seen and heard things that they should not and sometimes those kids do not have anyone they can run to and feel like they can be safe with. That is who I want to be. I want to be the person that they can run to and feel safe with. I also want to work in a public school because I want to help all different types of people, even special needs people. When I was growing up in public school, the kids with special needs would get put into classrooms where the teachers did not have any training with how to interact or teach a kid with special needs and so they did not know what to do. We had two girls in my grade with autism and my best friend and I would basically do what the teacher should have doing for them. We did not just teach them what we were learning but we interacted with them and taught them basic skills that you do not just learn in the classroom. This is the exact reason I want to get my masters in Special Education. I want to be prepared for when special needs kids put in my class. I also have a feeling that I probably with really like it and maybe even end up in a special needs classroom. I am currently already trying to reach my goal to be a light in kids’ lives by working with kids who have young single mothers. We have a business in Chattanooga and it is called the MOMentum network. During the week I help with childcare because the kids do get free childcare during the week. Then, on Tuesday nights the moms drop the kids off with us for childcare and the moms go to our main building to have a class. These classes range anywhere from budgeting to parenting. Every single time I go into the building to help with the kids or set up the meeting room for the moms, I try to just be a light with how I talk and interact with everyone. This is who I am and these are my goals that I want to achieve but I honestly do need a little more financial help in order to achieve my goals and dreams.

My name is Katelyn Gross. I am currently a senior at Chattanooga Christian School and will graduate in May of 2024. Ever since I was about ten years old, I have loved helping with kids. Whether it was in the nursery at my church or babysitting every weekend. I discovered the love that I had for helping children when I was in elementary school. My two primary friends were two girls with autism. I absolutely loved being their friend, learning how their minds worked, and being there when they needed someone. Ever since then, I have wanted to teach at the elementary school level. I did not know if I wanted to be a teacher in the classroom or a special education teacher. My only goal in life was to teach children and make an impact on at least one child's life. I finally decided that I wanted to teach in the classroom when I helped with a children’s soccer camp at my high school over the summer. There was one little girl that came into my group and she was crying. She kept saying that she was not going to have fun and she just wanted to go home. At that moment I promised her that it was going to be the best week of her life and she was going to have fun. At the end of the day, she had a smile on her face and told me that she had so much fun and could not wait to come back the next day. I knew that I made an impact in her life and it was not just because I made the camp fun. It was because it seemed fun to the kids while we taught them soccer and incorporated God into their learning. I then started thinking about what grade I wanted to teach. I decided that fifth grade was the grade that I had a big desire to teach because it was one of my hardest years in elementary school. It was so hard because I did not have a lot of friends and my teacher went through the steps of teaching us, instead of getting to know us as true people. When I become a teacher my biggest goal is to make an impact in at least one person’s life. I also want every kid in my class to feel special and feel like I am actually making an effort to know them as real people and not just students. I will strive to make sure every person in my class knows the material and will not move on until everyone does. I was always the student that was the last person in the class to understand something and by the time I did understand it, my teacher had moved onto a different lesson. I hope to make at least one kid’s day different every day and want to make a change in the education system by how teachers act and treat every kid. I hope to inspire not only other teachers but the kids that I teach and in other classes.