A Brief Note On The And Of The First Time Of My Job As A Child I Was A Teacher

The twenty-five stories that are contained in the book, My First Year As A Teacher, are about real teachers and their experiences during the first year of teaching. Each story is different. Some are about memorable students while other stories are about some of the hardships that are encountered as a novice teacher. The diverse sampling of stories in this book gives insight of what kind of problems one might encounter as a teacher, yet they also describe how rewarding the profession can be. I found it rather difficult to choose only ten stories as my favorite but after much consideration and rereading I decided on the following stories because in many ways I could relate to the students as well as the teachers that are given life in these stories.

School was a place where I could leave the dysfunctional atmosphere I live in and nothing took my mind off of my hardships like sports, music, and community service. To avoid the life I lived when school was over, I would learn new instruments and play different sports. I even began to participate in restoring Seattle parks every Saturday with a group called Earth Corps through a non-profit organization called Global Visionaries. I learned leadership skills and met people that changed my life for the better. I realized that there were many things I could do that would allow me to learn and give back to the community and at the same time allow me to escape from my

Throughout elementary, middle, and high school, I was viewed as less likely to succeed while also being labeled as lazy, dumb, and not willing to try. Labels affect people and I dropped out after one year in college. I took to the stereotype and believed that school was not my thing.

Throughout my lifetime, I have had many experiences that altered me forever. The best experience that has ever happened to me was when I moved to America from Egypt. Moving to another country like America was the most life –changing experience I have ever encountered. I lived in Egypt for ten years with my parents and older brother. My family was wealthy, my mother was a lawyer, and my father was a geologist. I attended a strict Catholic school when I was in kindergarten. We had to wear a uniform every day and have it clean and ironed. Afterwards, my parents transferred me to a public school because it was closer to home. The transition into the public school was difficult because it was hard for me to make friends at that time. When we

Time and time again I've found myself declaring education as the central pillar of my growth and development, that of which has been consistent throughout my life and educational career. From the age of 8 I've attributed school and learning as a way to escape the outside world, both willingly, and as an involuntary coping mechanism; school was a refuge, a safe place where I could build healthy relationships and escape my worries. I felt valued by my teachers, and I was given opportunities to contribute to a community, and for the first time felt autonomous- and that I could control my future.

As an early childhood educator I believe each child is an exceptional unique individual that needs to be provided a secure and loving environment in which they are able to grow emotionally, physically, socially and intellectually. My longing is to help each and every one of my students explore their creativity, understand their emotions and learn self-regulation along with social skills and the best of academics that I can possibly provide. The role I have as an educator is to guide my students while allowing them to explore their curiosities about the world around them and academics to blossom while teaching respect and caring for others.

Five long years ago, I was a seventh grader in junior high school. I hated almost every minute of it. I was picked on and was subjected to the “out” crowd, but honestly, that was important to me.

Up until I got into high school. I actually enjoyed school prior to my transition into high school. I was a B student and quite happy with a 3.0 GPA. At the time, I really did not give my education much thought. In other words, I did not think about my future then, and education had little value in the great scheme of life. However, I still enjoyed school, and had perfect attendance not missing a day unless it was absolutely a must. Unless I had a rare case of some unforeseen sickness as to keep from infecting others with some viscous illness I was suffering from at the time. It was not until I made the big move into that hierarchy of education that really changed my mind. This new experience of education was so different, so terrifying, so difficult, and overwhelming that I felt there was nothing else to do, but stop attending. I failed so miserably bad it cracked and crumbled the very foundation in which I spent the last nine years constructing. Without this foundation, I was nothing, I was stupid, and had nothing to offer.

When I was twelve, I had no appreciation for school. I saw it as nothing more as a

I remember going into my freshman year of high school nervous but excited because I thought I’d learn so many new things. Next thing you know I found myself dreading school. Was I being lazy? Was it my lack of motivation? I still can’t grasp why exactly I lost that excitement or that yearning to go to school. I was raised to have the idea that school was a place to learn not socialize. But at the age of 14, what teenagers don’t want to socialize and that’s what got a hold of me. I spent too much time worrying about other things that didn’t involve my education.

Growing up, I never had a strong sense of who I was or where I was headed; nevertheless, I always had a joy, deep love, and passion for school, yet I lacked the esteem to aggressively pursue school. To demonstrate, I was nominated to participate in a program entitled Prep for Prep, but I was afraid of the challenges that were to come if I were to be accepted into this program. Therefore, I did not try as best on the exam and ultimately my thoughts manifested and I was not accepted into the program.

When I think about an event that sticks out in my mind as one that was very important in my life, I think about changing schools in the seventh grade. About halfway through my middle school career, I became very unhappy at my school and with life in general. Upon discussing with my parents, we made the decision that I would switch schools and embark on a new journey in hopes to appease my unhappy soul. At first, I felt as if a new school would not help; little did I know what a profound change it would have on my life.

As a preschool teacher, I get many opportunities to contact with different directors and supervisors in the school environment. During six years of preschool teaching, through interacting with varied supervisors and working in several schools, I have experienced many positive and negative ones. I have also learned many valuable lessons from these experiences. As we know, everything is not always wonderful. Just as my experience, it is not always optimistic. In this journal, I would like to share my first supervisory experience with you, although it is not a happy one. I feel if I want to learn and improve myself, I need to talk about or reflect the experiences either positive or negative ones.

School, to me and among many peers of my age, is not a distant term. I have spent one-third of my life time sitting in classrooms, every week since I was seven years old. After spending this much time in school, many things and experiences that happened there have left their mark in my memory. Some are small incidences while some have had a great impact on me. However, regardless the degree of significance, things that happened all contributed to shape the person that I am now.

My greatest contribution as an instructor has been the time I have spent off the podium. There are several subjects that I may not be familiar with or maybe seen as the tougher subjects or perhaps even boring. The time that is spent preparing outside of the classroom is extremely important. As an instructor first and foremost you have to spend countless hours researching a subject, analyze it, and anticipate questions. It is not a comfortable to be in front of students and not fully knowing the subject. Not only does the material have to make sense to you, you then have to take that material and think about how to explain it so that every different Soldier from every different background can make sense of it. Practicing teaching methods using different comparisons, developing training aids all takes a lot of time outside of the duty hours to deliver the best level of instruction possible. Then there is the time spent improving on the lesson plan. The lesson plans we receive are often times missing information, they order they are in doesn’t make sense and sometimes they are completely blank a give use nothing to go off of. That means dedicating the hours outside of the class room to improve or even completely build that lesson plan. Time must be spent to ensure that every piece of information the students need is included. This is not always possible we could easily spend an entire week breaking down the components of an automatic transmission and go into