College Admissions Essay: The Role Of Teachers

Results of Mentor Teacher Discussions: We again touch on the topic of never stopping with a child, even though a child might be greatly above the grade they are in or the grade you are teaching it’s highly important to go find more challenging work for them to be successful.

I have loved sports my whole life, even at a very young age. I would watch it with my dad, and he would take me to sports games. I loved to play basketball in the backyard when I was little. I have always loved cheering for my favorite sports team. I love watching the Minnesota Vikings and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Two years ago my dad surprised me with Vikings tickets. I was so happy to get to go to a game. Sports has always been a big part of my life. Two years ago, I got a new view of sports when I started umpiring.

The teachers in this class show that they care about the children, and the children are in a very good environment.

“I look out at all of the fresh young faces in this classroom and I can think of one thing to say: none of you have ever read Dickens, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, or heck, just any classical literature.” That was the very first thing my 8th grade teacher said in class in my third year in O’farrell middle school. He said that quote with a joke, but I only took the most important part of it and he didn’t say it to get a laugh, in fact he glared at anyone who so much as smirked. I know, because I smirked. He went on to say that he had worked long enough at this school that he was technically un-fireable, and since absolutely nothing could touch his job security being well-liked was not important to him. His stated goal was not to teach us about English, nor was it to prepare us for college. His only ambition was to spend the two semesters getting us “ mentally equipped enough to properly read a basic classic novel.”

I have a very good idea as to what career I would want after college. The plan for me would be for me to go get a MA in history after FDU and then go into education. I think the goal for me would be to get a Ph.D. in history, but that would be further down the line. But if I was not on this path my two other career options would be public relations and counseling.

Where would we be without teachers? Teachers possess the greatest power to influence students and consequently can shape America’s future. I found this humorous definition of a teacher on Urban Dictionary: “A person who cares enough about abusive and ungrateful teens to work for crappy pay and long hours while hoping someday students mature enough to realize how lucky they are to have someone who gives a crap about them.” Thankfully, I am not the kind of teen the author is talking about, for I know the significance and importance of professors. Today, I would like to utilize this opportunity to pay tribute to one of the best professors I have ever had, Professor Dona Wonder Woman Walker.

I want all the teachers to know how great they are. Even if we don't always show our appreciation on the outside, we know that we couldn’t have reached where we are now if it wasn’t for all of them. They not only taught us, they guided us. They showed us our own potential, so for that, let’s give the teachers, all of them, a good round of applause. (Wait)

The teachers fostered strong relationships with the children through communication and guidance. The teachers used respectful and authentic speech when communicating with the children. They held conversations listening to the children’s thoughts and validating them. They did not speak in cute voices, but rather conveyed respect by speaking as they did to adults. The teachers also did not give praise through generic good jobs or thank you, but instead flooded the program with reflective and responsive statements as encouragement techniques. They stated desired behavior throughout activities for example: “Wow, you paint the whole page purple using the small paint strokes, you are going up and down.”, and “Thank you for washing your hands, I can see you scrubbed them really hard to make sure they were clean”. This took direct observation and stated direct feedback for the children to utilize, while validating the child as smiles crept onto their faces after being acknowledged. The teachers also formed meaningful guidance through familiarity with a child’s strengthens and hesitations, in order to facilitate a meaningful and variety of experiences. One child was constructing with blocks when the teacher placed the blocks in the save bin, so no one could touch it, pulling him to the art table. She proceeded to sing Patty Cake, while touching his hands to make the appropriate hand motions. Then the boy began to paint. Later, she told me she did this, because she knew he did not

Health, deaths, and lack of confidence. These are obstacles that I have faced in various life events. There are two options on how one can overcome these obstacles: one could try to ignore the pain while the second is to look in the direction of God. Those who choose to go down the path of pain have not experienced that way of God or may not have taken a chance to see what he can do for them. People, like me, who choose to look towards God puts their trust in God and know that he has a plan for them. When family members were dying, a health issue rose and I was lacking confidence, I looked towards verses in the bible that would help me look for the positive outcomes than the negative thoughts. I then noticed God was going to show how he speaks

When I was growing up all I had was an education, I had no friends, activities, or even family to look to for support, strength, or a role model. I only had myself, my soul, and my mind, a body to work, a soul to express, and a mind to what? I didn’t know and with no one around me to ask I began to realize, around fourth grade, during school mental capacity is meant to expand. A person’s mentality and intellect are traits not from my religious deity, but in turn from education and progression in studies from our school systems taught by qualified educators. This thought sparked me to start realizing what my mind can acquire in literature, so I began reading in my abundant time expanding my previous vocabulary exponentially. In fifth grade I

This was the moment I had been waiting for the entire summer. My first moment as a “real teacher” in charge of a class full of students. Even more exciting was the fact I was teaching kindergarten! As an incoming first-year Teach for America Corp member in Las Vegas, we had heard about the Achievement or Opportunity Gap all summer and I felt that I was given a special opportunity. I determined in my mind that my students would not be behind but be ahead by the time that they finished kindergarten. I spent hours preparing seating arrangements, organizing my library and centers, going over the standards and lesson planning with people on my grade level. There was no doubt in my mind that the students in room 29 would accomplish great things.

As a child and even into adulthood I lacked in caring for my studies. I was never a particularly strong student. Being a poor student was not due to the inability to learn. It stemmed from my lack of understanding the importance of an education. I coasted by, did the bare minimum to get through high school and unfortunately that carried over to college. I graduated from Stow-Munroe Falls High School with a 2.3 GPA. I was in the bottom 20% of my graduating class. I was; however, still accepted into the University of Akron. Unfortunately, I was not mentally mature enough to begin college.

Ever since I was young, I was told that education is the path to success. My father always told me that education will open more doors for me in the future and that I shouldn’t give up. Growing up as a student with English as my second language has been difficult in my educational life, although I comprehend the language sometimes there are some words that I am not yet familiar with, education has given me the ability to understand English.  My sponsor of interpreters club has told us, that being bilingual is a gift that we must take advantage of.

I have always been “the smart one.” In high school, everyone came to me for answers. They thought I knew everything; I thought I knew everything. It wasn’t until I started college that I realized that high school was just a back and forth between memorizing and forgetting. I started college and it struck me that I could dive head first into what I wanted to know. I could spend time really learning what I wanted to learn. I’m not saying I didn’t learn anything in high school because I did. I just didn’t value knowledge as much as I do now. I’ve been in college for a semester now and in that semester, I realized that I don’t just want to learn. I thirst for new facts,

The semester is going by fast here at DIA. The past week I have helped some teachers out in their classrooms, lunch duty, creating goals with kids, reading “One” as a lesson for character education, trainings and meetings. The more the kids see me the more they are able to feel comfortable around me. I helped out the kids in the first grade Spanish class. As a social worker I feel it is important to be able to wear different hats, even if that means teacher or babysitter. The more the kids see me involved in school the more comfortable they are getting with me. During lunch duty I have gotten to know some kids. I have helped Julie and some kids with creating goals and checking up on them weekly. It is exciting to learn and observe Julie; she has been a school counselor and teacher for over 30 years. She plans her lessons a day before, uses lessons that have worked in the past, uses some books for her lessons, she has written her own books and songs as well. Therefore it is comforting to learn from someone who has a lot of experience working with kids. We read the book “One,” to the class and I got to read it to three classes. It was in English but I used some Spanish words too, and that made the kids excited. It made me happy to hear a kid say, “I love that book!” The books that we read to the character education class have lessons such as bullying and standing up to the bullies. The latest training I have done is the McKinney-Vento homeless children training. Every school has to have a person who is trained for this in case of situations where there are homeless kids and families in the school. The latest meeting I have gone to is the Riverside Task Force as part of my macro level.