For years I have been a swim instructor and someone who works with special needs individuals. My experience as an IHSS worker and instructor with swim students and most recently Little Red Hen of Chico clients have all led me to the path of becoming a teacher for small children. As a member for the East Bay Innovations Team, I became a part of an interconnected family of clients, as well as several client support groups wherein interacting with family and client supportively was crucial to the support of my work. From the basic structural aspects of a stocked refrigerator and clean home, to the more intimate needs of hygiene and emotional understanding, I believe my experience in working with my client equipped me with skills that become crucial when working in a complex, multifaceted field that requires understanding of your job from many different perspectives. As a swim instructor, I worked with many children simultaneously, at different levels of swim skill. This type of work demands the ability to provide safety, security, and encouragement of all kinds to a group of children as they observe you with each student. I work hard to this day do still work to develop and interactive methodology that allows me to continue to make progress with my students through a balance of support and encouraging expectations. I have experience with behavioral work and athletic curriculum forming and instruction, and believe that once these skills are melded with the ability to plan lessons and customize based on the skills of each student, I have have great capability to help children rise to a position of great potential. My passion for working with kids and helping learning and growth at all levels is something that will continue to drive me forward in my efforts.

I have taken part in a variety of programs that have assisted me personally through my recovery from addiction, depression, and anxiety. Carrying the message to those still suffering is a gift that I give to both myself and others. At the start of my career in my bachelors of communication with a multimedia emphasis, I began to utilize counseling services offered by the university, pleasantly surprised at the relief which came with my first personal effort exerted towards the repair of my own mental health. Therapy flamed my interest in my own professional pursuits and addressed many normalized stigmas holding me back from engaging in healthy psychological maintenance. My experience in Narcotics Anonymous, from attending meetings, to getting clean, to finding a sponsor, and most importantly working the steps, has been an integral part of my inspiration in the field of social work, and my motivation to become an addiction counselor. The sense of stability that NA gave me became something that I wanted to give back, not only to NA, but to the rest of the world as well. My experience as a service board member through NA has given me a strong background in collaborative community support. As a bisexual woman, I have experience sexism and heterosexim and struggled to find an identiry which I thought was presentable to society. I also struggled with my gender identity. During these confusions of life, I suffered from an intense addiction to marijuana and alcohol, which led me to be incarcerated for minor crimes. I thought that I had totally lost my value. When I found Narcotics anonymous and a new way of life, I felt the strength and confidence to utilize my ambition. Adversity breeds strength, and the slippery slope is not a permanent path. I feel that I am able connect with people struggling with their mental health because, though my story is not the same, I have been in a similar position of not believing that I could turn things around. I was initially attracted to Business by the prestige of self-sufficiency and service to the community as a crucial economic entity was an attractive appeal, financially and ethically in its autonomy. Under stress in a foreign environment, I quickly fell prey to the dark influence of normalized addiction, as a result of living in the drug economy that is Santa Cruz. After moving back to the East Bay, bringing addiction with me, I graduated with my AA. I decided to become a Communications major, combining my passion for writing and integrated public relations. The study of communications, mostly within the theory courses, brought me closer and closer to my interest in mental health. My struggles to find a baseline for my own mental health now acts as the driving force behind my motivation to help others in finding their own stability. Despite uncertainties, my Communications BA has helped me to find a sense of self. My past jobs have acted as stepping stones to the present. In applying my passion for swimming, which I had been cultivating since around the age of eight, and my more recent skills gained from four years of high school water polo, I ended a career in teaching kids of all ages to swim. Cultivating my passion for teaching was fulfilling, but life nonetheless became a struggle to maintain alongside the mental disease of addiction. I ended up going to jail twice in the year of 2019 for minor crimes, which led to me realizing that the use of marijuana and alcohol were causing me to go down a dangerous path. In my recovery, this fulfilling and interaction intensive, community lifestyle was something I sought for when I began searching for a job again. My previous job position at East Bay Innovations, a company through which I work in the disabled community, allowed me to assist people in their homes by administering medication, ensuring proper daily nutrition, and continuing maintenance of personal hygiene and socialization as a form of maintaining mental health. I cared and still care deeply for the clients with whom I work. In training, we become informed and qualified to assist clients in advocating for their personal needs, both mentally and otherwise, become capable of assisting them in budgeting, and in advocacy through self expression through taste, beliefs, and passions. This is very similar to the work I do now at the Little Red Hen in Chico, working with developmentally delayed children. My teaching experience and passion for teaching and interacting with children, as well as my diverse ability to communicate, has overwhelmingly impassioned me to pursue teaching as a career.

Love is really all that matters. I would also like to be able to express my success as a young educator who traveled the path of pursuit of teaching and succeeded, and came to a point when they were able to make a difference in the lives of others. Being a teacher is a huge responsibility which allows people to make a huge impact on the lives of others, hopefully for the better. My hope is to show the importance of caring through others by striving to achieve my goals throughout the course of my career. My grandfather was a teacher for over forty years of his life, and always told me that the most important thing in teaching is to love others. He was loved in turn by his community and is to this day remembered by generations of people in the city of Alameda and across the Bay Area. He was not particularly rich or famous, nor was he seen by all as a perfect man, but he loved and was passionate about what he did and this changed many lives in a brilliant way. I will strive to find this love and passion and sense of community in my life.

Addiction is the social justice issue which primarily wanted to focus of when I was in pursuit of a career in social work. My dream was to become an addiction counselor or therapist in pursuit of helping others with addictions like the ones I suffered. Identity confusion, feeling apart from society, and feeling hopeless within the confines of one's life are things which accumulate for those who do not have the support which they need. I have experienced this crucial relationship as a sponsee who relies on a sponsor to guide me through the 12 steps of NA. I feel as though my sponsor is my mentor and acts as a safe outlet for self expression when I feel my sobriety is threatened by my mental health. We didn’t become this way in one day, so in seeking change, easy does it. In getting more in touch with the field of IHSS work and mentally disabled clients, I realized that I had a passion for communication interpretation. This is why I began my work at the Little Red Hen once residing in Chico, working with developmentally delayed children. I was in turn reminded of my passion of working with children, which I did for years as a swim instructor. This full circle of a love for humanities work, brought me to the start of my teaching credential program.

In working intensively in various environments with people of a wide range of personality type, I have learned how to constructively respond to different types of communication. Verbal, behavioral, body language, and various non-verbal communications styles were things that I was trained in efficiently interpreting and responding to in adults and children. In dealing with children whose ages have ranged from 2-16, young adults 17-25, and finally adults of middle age adulthood, I have been able to effectively obtain and expand my communication tool set. My goal as a kindergarten teacher is to inspire my children to love learning. The only was to do this is to be able to build a relationship of trust and understanding with students as individuals and as a group. Knowing how to cultivate a safe and constructive learning environment is born of these crucial communications skills as well as experience in a dynamic environment which considers many levels of learning and understanding. With a teaching MA and multi subject credential I will know my way around a classroom and be able to apply my communication and diverse consideration skills to lesson plans and activities in a way that can grab the attention of my students and lay out the tools that they will need so that they will be ready to use them. In five years, I have to have over three years of teaching experience and to have settled myself into the community of Chico as a community leader and role model. I believe that my ability to connect with people of different communication styles and understand their ability to progress in their learning will allow me to do this with passion and grace. I have dedicated my life to interpersonal work and humanities work in search of the right niche for me, that will serve as an outlet for myself to benefit others. I believe that I deserve this scholarship because of my dedication to my path, and because most of the work I did was not high paying and easy, but instead was work that I chose because it impassioned me and allowed me to grow towards the career that I am pursuing today. I decided years ago to work for my passion and not my pockets, and I will continue to maintain that pattern as I strive to become a part of the teaching workforce, as an advocate, role model, and ally for children with whom I work. I will be able to strengthen and uplift the spirits and confidence and parents and their children alike. One integral part of being a teacher for young children is bolstering the relationship between your student and their parent in order to improve communication and family life. Classroom learning is just one piece of the puzzle of childhood, and it takes time to teach this to both students and parents. If a teacher fails in communicating these things effectively, and focuses only of the "book learning", they have let the opportunity of growing a relationship with their community slip through the cracks. If, however, they succeed, they, their student and their parents and support network are allowed to grow, and oftentimes continue to grow together. I would like to be able to express my success as a young educator who traveled the path of pursuit of teaching and succeeded, and came to a point when they were able to make a difference in the lives of others. Being a teacher is a huge responsibility which allows people to make a huge impact on the lives of others, hopefully for the better.