Every school day, I look forward to my 12:00 p.m. Beginning SIPPS group. SIPPS stands for Systematic instruction in Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words, and my group consists of four first-grade boys. Each of them faces his own challenges in learning to read — two are currently receiving speech therapy and have yet to learn all their letters, and one recently received an Autism diagnosis and is an English Learner. Knowing that I am helping them build foundational language skills aligns with my deep rooted desire to serve others — the same desire that pulls my heart towards being a speech language pathologist. I also have a personal perspective on the importance of this field. My older brother, Jacob, was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as a child and has received services in pragmatics, so I have had close proximity to someone benefitting from speech therapy. This experience taught me early about the importance of building not just verbal skills, but social language, organization, and executive functioning skills as well. When it came time to choose a major, Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences was my top choice. I transferred to San Diego State University after getting my Associate of Arts from Allan Hancock Community College in only one year, allowing me to earn my Bachelor’s Degree in three. At SDSU, I served as the Community Engagement Research for Communication Access (CERCA) Audiology Lab’s social media and outreach coordinator. I also was able to travel with Therapy Abroad to Belize. While there, I had the opportunity to implement and administer speech therapy to preschool-age children under supervision of a speech pathologist, as well as collect data and documentation for each client. Both of these experiences deepened my understanding of the field and my commitment to becoming an SLP. After graduating, I chose to invest a year teaching in a school setting before applying to graduate programs. I currently work as a SIPPS, academic intervention, and visual arts teacher at Olga Reed School in Los Alamos, a small rural town 15 miles south of Santa Maria. I work with 10 grade levels, transitional kindergarten through eighth grade, at a school where 95% of the students are Socioeconomically Disadvantaged and a third of the students are English Learners. This experience has given me important experiences and insights into connecting with students, classroom management, progress monitoring, proper data documentation, and collaboration with fellow educators – skills that will serve me well in graduate school and as an SLP. This brings me back to the four boys in my Beginning SIPPS group. They remind me of my brother, my experiences in college, and why I chose this path in the first place. I am teaching them to read now, but I aspire to be the SLP that helps students like them build the language and communication skills that are foundational to their success – both in and out of the classroom.