I was pushed to become a teacher by my high school English teacher back in 2011. He really inspired me because he believed in me. As a student of color I was not supported back then, but he believed in me and I have dedicated all of my education to be an educator like him. I began my graduate degree years ago and only need to finish the final thesis, but money ran out and I had to work more. I've been teaching for 8 years, but my mentor and coach kept me going. She passed away in March 2024 and has really impacted me and strengthened my determination to be an equitable teacher who helps each and every students educational journey. I refuse to allow outside forces to allow any student to feel less than. I am dedicated to making sure each multilingual student is provided with the best education possible. These scholars will be creating the next future and they deserve every possible tool to help them be successful. It is important to pull from past experiences and I have been fortunate to have at least 2 people in my career help push me towards my motivation. I am deeply motivated to create impactful change in education. We need more educators who shine a light in scholars lives. They each deserve opportunities regardless of their income, race, or ethnicity. Typically low income students are placed in situations where they are pushed through the schools and they are not provided with quality rigorous education. They deserve to have access to it and will become very successful. The mentor that I learned from would observe me several times a week and provide real time feedback and sit down feedback. She was an inspiration because she would push everyone to view multiple perspectives. She was once a teacher and if you ever saw her coach, you could tell because of the passion in her words. It invited people to want to be as impactful as her. I am a better educator because of her and I intend on keeping her legacy alive. It is our job as educators to provide an equitable and rigours education. We need to prepare them for college by providing an education that provides the type of organization and rigor college will have. They deserve to be prepped for their SAT and ACT exams properly by providing a well-rounded education with english, writing, science, math, and engineering. Each of these courses provide a broad spectrum of education to help challenge them, but also set them up for success when they are introduced to their first college courses. It is important to have a safe space for them to learn about things, but also themselves because mental health is really important. As educators we should be uplifting their voices and teaching them how to use them in different spaces. Code switching is a skill that needs to be practiced and taught to help them speak for different occasions or presentations. Essentially, I have been influenced by my hardships given by society due to my identity, but the two mentors along my educational journey have impacted me deeply. I owe them several praises for pushing me to be better. Unfortunately, they both have passed, but they will live on through their legacy.

My greatest achievement has been successfully getting my students of color and multilingual students to achieve over 200 points of growth in their PSAT testing. As a teacher who is BIPOC and speaks another language, I know how hard it is to take standardized exams. I want to make sure each student is able to achieve their greatest potentials, but they need the tools provided to them. I was able to look at their prior data and hone in on the areas they needed help with in reading and writing. I am their composition teacher in high school and I am dedicated to making sure they are college or trade school ready. These skills will help them in real life situations and to achieve highly successful opportunities and challenges. It is my job as their educator to push them with academic rigor and high expectations to help challenge them to their highest capability. It was not an easy route to internalise their data, but with careful viewing I was able to determine they needed to focus on English Standards to help them answer their grammar questions in the SAT. They also needed help with context clues and rhetorical situations. After I looked at that I was able to make a two month plan to help them practice and develop these skills. I also started to do some timed ten question exams. With this scaffolded and tiered approach they were able to successfully identify context clues in passages and sentences to identify the meaning of a word. They also were able to make connections between the passages and questions. One of the main difficulties the SAT offers to multilingual students is the academic language that is presented. It was my goal to help bridge that gap as their teacher. I was able to help them slow down and internalise the questions by applying associated knowledge. This experience taught me that all we need to do as educators is make sure we are paying attention to what our students need. No formula is going to work for each class period. These students have varying identities, personalities, and learning styles. I learned I need to have more active monitoring and application. I hope to achieve more positive results like this in the future with my students because they deserve the best education possible. They need the proper tools, expectations, and standards applied to them so they can see they can do anything if they apply themselves. I plan to be a lifelong learner and need the extra graduate degree to help me reach higher positions to make change.

I was pushed to become a teacher by my high school English teacher in 2011. He really inspired me because he believed in me. As a student of color I was not supported back then, but he believed in me and I have dedicated all of my education to be an educator like him. I began my graduate degree years ago and only need to finish the final thesis, but money ran out and I had to work more. I've been teaching for 8 years, but my mentor and coach kept me going. She passed away in March 2024 and has really impacted me and strengthened my determination to be an equitable teacher who helps each and every students educational journey. I refuse to allow outside forces to allow any student to feel less than. I am dedicated to making sure each multi-lingual student is provided with the best education possible. These scholars will be creating the next future and they deserve every possible tool to help them be successful. It is important to pull from past experiences and I have been fortunate to have at least 2 people in my career help push me towards my motivation. I am deeply motivated to create impactful change in education. We need more educators who shine a light in scholars lives. They each deserve opportunities regardless of their income, race, or ethnicity. Typically low income students are placed in situations where they are pushed through the schools and they are not provided with quality rigorous education. They deserve to have access to it and will become very successful. The mentor that I learned from would observe me several times a week and provide real time feedback and sit down feedback. She was an inspiration because she would push everyone to view multiple perspectives. She was once a teacher and if you ever saw her coach, you could tell because of the passion in her words. It invited people to want to be as impactful as her. I am a better educator because of her and I intend on keeping her legacy alive. It is our job as educators to provide an equitable and rigours education. We need to prepare them for college by providing an education that provides the type of organization and rigor college will have. They deserve to be prepped for their SAT and ACT exams properly by providing a well-rounded education with english, writing, science, math, and engineering. Each of these courses provide a broad spectrum of education to help challenge them, but also set them up for success when they are introduced to their first college courses. It is important to have a safe space for them to learn about things, but also themselves because mental health is really important. As educators we should be uplifting their voices and teaching them how to use them in different spaces. Code switching is a skill that needs to be practiced and taught to help them speak for different occasions or presentations. Essentially, I have been influenced by my hardships given by society due to my identity, but the two mentors along my educational journey have impacted me deeply. I owe them several praises for pushing me to be better. Unfortunately, they both have passed, but they will live on through their legacy.