My name is Mackenzie Balde, and I am a sophomore at Edgewood College. After graduating college, I plan on becoming a special education teacher. The need for teachers, especially special education teachers, is growing. I want to be a special education teacher because it is my passion to help children that have special needs, whether it be behavioral or due to a disability. As a young girl, I have always been drawn to helping others. My grandma is the one who inspired me to become a special education teacher because she was a special education aide herself. It was seeing her acts of patience and kindness towards these students that drew me to this profession. Since then, I have watched many different special education teachers work, but none of them have been as impactful as my grandma's. I hope to live up to my grandma’s standards and impact my students in the best possible way. I currently have an on-campus job working for the Cutting Edge. The Cutting Edge is a program at Edgewood designed to help students with disabilities in college. I am a course coach, so I spend my time helping students with their homework assignments. I have been doing this job for the last two years and it has solidified my choice of becoming a cross-categorical special education teacher. I want to take my passion for helping others and use it to shape the minds of future generations. That is my plan to make a positive impact on the world by teaching our world's children. Even if I can only help one student, I will have an impact on the future. I want to help as many students as I can succeed, and this is not only regarding children with special needs. I want to get involved in different clubs at my future school and help shape the minds of those students as well. My impact will come from the students I teach and even though I plan on teaching the younger students I can still have an impact on their lives. I had a teacher that I remember from when I was younger because they helped shape who I am today. That is what I hope to give these students. I want to be like my grandma and impact these students in the best way possible. I want these students to think back later in their lives, no matter where they are, and remember me as a teacher who changed their lives. Children are our future, and it is my job to educate them.

My name is Mackenzie Balde, and I am a sophomore at Edgewood College. My goal for the future is to be a cross-categorical special education teacher. As a special education teacher, one of my main goals will be to help students with their reading. I believe that reading is an important aspect of life. Reading is an important part of my life, and it has helped me through many challenges throughout my life so far. I hope to bring reading into my classroom in a way that impacts students the same way I have been impacted by reading. I recently learned about a program called the Edmark Reading Program. This program is designed for kindergartens through third graders. This is a program with highly repetitive word recognition in order to help students progress with their reading abilities. Edmark is a supplement to phonics-based reading. Edmark allows students to move at their own pace as well as the teachers' pace. This helps the teacher have more control over how their students learn. They receive a new word every week and then work with that word and all the previous words. If the student has trouble with a word they have previously learned, then the teacher can go back and reteach that lesson. This program includes pictures, stories, comprehension questions, and games. An example of a lesson would be starting with word recognition, then picture match, followed by phrase matching, next reading a story, and finally answering comprehension questions. This is a program that I hope to implement in my special education classroom. Though I believe academic reading is important I would also love to get my students involved in reading for fun. I am currently in my first year of practicums and one student loves reading so much that she picks it for her free time. I want to encourage reading in all of my student's lives, but I also do not want to force it. I do not want these students to come to resent reading. I would like to promote reading as a good thing. I would like to have a classroom library in my room filled with different kinds of books. This way even though I have students with disabilities they are still able to enjoy reading. I would love to have books ranging from picture books to comic books. Reading instruction is important especially when related to those with disabilities, but I believe that extracurricular reading can be just as important.

Hello, my name is Mackenzie Balde and I have anxiety. Anxiety has always been a huge problem in my life because it has stopped me from being the best version of myself, I could be. My anxiety was definitely a larger problem in high school than it is now. As a sophomore in college, I have learned to handle my anxiety pretty well. In high school, I sometimes struggled with wanting to go out and being scared to do new things. I am an introverted person so new situations tend to freak me out. This stopped me from attending several get-togethers with my friends, but then I would be at home and think about all of the things that I was missing out on. My academic performance was affected more severely by my anxiety than my personal life was. I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself to keep my grades up and anything lower than an A- was unacceptable. This was because I thought that if I did not get good grades, then I would not get into a good college, if I did not get into a good college, then I would get a bad job, and probably die. This was just a daily thought process for me which became exhausting. I talked these thoughts out to my parents, and they told me just not to worry so much. This inevitably made me think about them more. Eventually, this kind of thinking led to a panic attack which I had right before my ACT. I did have to take my ACT a second time because I was not happy with the score I received the first time, but I was more prepared that time. In my freshman year of college, I found several ways to help bring my anxiety down to a manageable level. I listen to music a lot. While I am walking around, during homework, and even at meals. It is a great way for me to relax and think about the words of the songs instead of my spiraling thoughts. I also love to read. Reading gives me a way to escape the “real” world, if only for a small amount of time. It helps me immerse myself in someone else's problems instead of my own. It helps to acknowledge my anxiety instead of ignoring it like I used to do. By acknowledging it, I am able to take steps to manage the anxiety rather than waiting for it to overwhelm me. Overall, I have learned how to manage my anxiety and while it is definitely still there, especially during exam week, I have ways to manage it.

Generational wealth is financial assets that help your future family. Generational wealth is the wealth that will outlast you and help others in your family achieve their goals. Generational wealth is a way for your contributions to others to outlive your life. A way to pay for my children’s college so that they do not have to pay for it themselves. In order to achieve generational wealth, I will first save as much money as possible. With each paycheck that I receive part of it will automatically go into a savings account. I will then pay my bills and other expenses, but whatever is left after that will also go into my savings account. I know that this will not be enough, so I plan to learn about investing my money. I want to buy stocks and participate in the stock market. I know that this can be risky, but it can also produce great results. Not only could I buy stocks, but I could invest in bonds as well. These are both great ways to invest money for the future. One other thing I can do is own my house. If I own my house, then future relatives will not have to buy their own and will save money. I can also get involved in real estate. Even though the housing market is always fluctuating this is one of the best ways to create generational wealth. It may also help to set up a trust fund for my children. If I set up a trust fund, then I can control how my wealth is passed on. With trust funds, you can also avoid certain taxes. This means that any future children would be sheltered from taxes that could affect their inheritance. I can also decide how my children receive their inheritances as well. Maybe they cannot have their inheritances until they either enroll in a college or get a full-time job. This way I can have some control over how they receive their money and make sure they do not just plan on spending it all at once. These are the ways that I plan to achieve generational wealth. The ways that I will save for the future and leave my financial mark. I will save, invest, own property, get involved in real estate, and set up trust funds. I want my future children to be secure in their lives and not have to worry too much about money.