When I entered the field of education, I did not want to stay after the first few weeks. I cried almost daily, thinking I was not cut out for it. However, I am now seven years in, and I absolutely love it. Building relationships with students is by far the most critical part of being a teacher, and I prioritize that over the content for the first few weeks of school. I get to know my students, their likes, dislikes, ability to read and understand, those things are important. If a student does not like o read in front of others I will not make them, but they will read to me in a one on one session. That is something I learned while building relationships. My biggest passion in education is helping those who go under the radar and need the help the most, those kids who are acting out because they do not understand and would instead get in trouble so they can be sent out of class rather than try to put forth any effort. I seek to help them like to learn, even if it is in small chunks. I have encountered so many students who want to be acknowledged, seen, and heard, and when they don't get that, they act out and cause a distraction because then they know they will get the attention. I can recall when I started teaching, I was "warned" of a female student who was going to be a "pain in my side," which was going to be disrespectful and would make me quit. When I met this young lady at first we was all those things, until i built a relationship with her. It was then when i was able to assess her and I learned that she was in fact very smart, she could read and in elementary and 6th grade she made level 4s on her end of year state test. When I talked to her, she disclosed that the reason she acted out was that when she was the "good and smart" girl, her teachers overlooked her and gave all the attention to the kids who were acting out and needed the most help, and she wanted to get attention and help. It was then when we sat down and talked, and we agreed that she would not act out in class and would be able to showcase her skills and help me help those struggling. That young lady became my biggest helper in class, and she was a shining star. I want to achieve this by pursuing a career in educational leadership, in which I can help beginning teachers and all students in the school. I want to show young students that it is okay to be smart, to achieve success, and to be capable of anything they believe they can do.

After being a classroom teacher for over seven years, I have decided to pursue a career in school administration to be of greater service to all students and not only the ones assigned to me in my classroom. While in the school, I shared that I engaged my students through games and small groups. When there was an area that we struggled in, I would group kids who were struggling with those who had a better understanding, and it worked like magic every time. My goal as I move into educational leadership is to be able to assist and help build new teachers' abilities to utilize different strategies and face the everyday struggles we have as educators. As a classroom teacher, I used as many other strategies as possible to engage my students and help them grow academically and personally. Builing relationships is the single most important part of being an educator, once you can accomplish that task they rest will fall into place, you can engage a students if you have a relationship and they know that you care about them. Some ways that I use games in the classroom are "video games" such as Kahoot and Quizzes, but also noncomputer games such as Boys vs. Girls and Pictionary. Technology is all the rage in classrooms, and I am all for allowing students to use technology to learn and thrive; however, there is nothing like a good old-fashioned competition or paper and pencil activity. When they struggled with parts of speech, we would play "Silent Graffiti," in which they were broken up into groups; each had a sentence, and they had to identify the part of speech of each word in the sentence, but they were not allowed to talk to each other, hints on the silent part. They loved it and were able to see each other's thinking. When allowed to talk, they could discuss why they were right or wrong; if they were bad, they helped each other figure out why. As the mother of a special needs child and an educator, I want to ensure that special needs kids are included in all school activities, and this is one of my biggest passions. As a classroom teacher, I included the special needs kids in anything my grade-level middle schoolers did, from field trips to the zoo and amusement parks to outside field days and everything in between. When they were working on learning about ducks and water, I allowed them to use my classroom ducks so that they could count them and see how they float.