My Goals To Become A Teacher

How often do you thinking “I hate math! I wish I never had to do it!” Well that may not just be yourself talking. In recent studies it has been found that students who are told that math is difficult by parents or other adults themselves believe that math is difficult. Instead of encouraging the fear of math in children, adults should encourage them and try to help with math not complain with the children or to not help them making the excuse that the parent or adult is bad at math. While the adult does not have to make math seem like the best thing in the world, they need to avoid stating the common association that they do not like math, or that they are not good at it.

I am Brianna Downer and my goal is to become an elementary school teacher. Becoming a teacher is not something that happens overnight. This is a process where you have to know the requirements, challenges, and also the pros and cons of being a teacher. My goal will be achieved at the end of my journey.

It has been my dream since Elementary School to become an Elementary School teacher. The decision to attend college has not always been an easy decision. I have many goals to obtain my college degree. I have had many conversations about attending college. Some conversations being very helpful and persuasive, some being very negative and nerve wrecking. The school that I chose to attend in the end was Alabama State University. I promised myself that this school will make me the best teacher since I chose my favorite teacher.

“Math is not, generally speaking, presented in a fun way. The concepts, as I see them, are fun, and that's the way I'd like to convey them myself;” Danica McKellar once said. Most people do not see math the way I do. I see the fun in math and notice that math and numbers exist in almost every aspect of the world around. I believe that more people need to see math the way I do. Students today are not taught math in a way that sparks their interests. They are taught how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, but who has fun doing that? There needs to be a better way to teach young students math so they are interested and want to learn. This is where I can help.

Personally one quote that resonated with my individual teaching philosophy states “The job of a teacher has expanded to ‘counselor, therapist, doctor, parent, and attorney’” (Layton, 2015, p. 3). Through social media and rumors, society has created an image about education as being as simple career that anyone can do. However, they do not realize that education is not only about teaching students the standard subjects, but to teach them how to be active and become productive citizens within

For years, students are brought up and inspired by the adults in their lives. When thinking back on all the people that have helped me strive to be the person I am today, and the person I eventually want to be, I’m instantly reminded of all of the teachers that have left a mark on me. Specifically my eleventh grade algebra teacher, Mr. Hart. He showed me that there is nothing wrong with having a love of math. Ever since grade school I've enjoyed puzzles and numbers and the “ah ha” moment when it all finally came together, but anytime I tell someone I enjoy math, they look at me with a look of disgust. It seems to be known that math is supposed to me the “most hated subject” and I’d love to change the way students and even adults see it. Spending the majority of my life in the school systems I have seen that teachers have a societal responsibility to shape their students into who they will become in the real world, and that is what I am going to strive to achieve.

My personal goal as many of other students is to complete my BSN and after to advance my education in Leadership and Management. My professional goal is to improve my knowledge and critical thinking as an employee of the health care, and learn more management and leadership skills that I can use in my current position. Christian Camaraderie will help me in archiving my goals with the support provided the Academic personnel and with the support of other students that became brother and sister in Christ. This is one of the areas that makes difference in this school because is based in the faith of our Christ the Lord and emphasis the trust, friendship and love. As online student, I am not able to participate on any extracurricular activities,

Ideally, when I graduate, I would like to enter the credential program at Cal Poly Pomona. As an English Education major, I feel like this is the next logical step for me as I seek to move forward on my path of becoming a teacher. The opportunities that await me in the credential program truly excite me because I have always found my studies of English Education to be very rewarding and purposeful. I have found this to be especially true now because I am currently in the process of conducting observation hours at local high schools in Pomona as part of my English Education curriculum. When I am in the classroom, I immediately feel a sense of joy, purpose, and productivity. Outside of the classroom, I do have experience teaching as a leader for a club on campus; I am a Woman’s Bible Study Leader for Cal Poly Cru and I have found this experience of teaching college students to be the most exciting, challenging, and rewarding experience I have ever had the pleasure of being a part of. It can become overwhelming as doubts and deadlines tend to sneak in on me from time to time, but I know that being a teacher is worth every ounce of pressure because of the positive impact that a teacher has the ability to make on a student. There is an incredible statistic that states that “On average a teacher affects 3,000 children over the course of their career” (Bickley). This opportunity stirs my heart like nothing else because when I was in high school, I had an incredible teacher named

Because of my enthusiasm for mathematics, I became the tutor for the Math Lab at Gardner-Webb. With this job, I am available to students struggling in one-hundred-level mathematics courses every week. This has allowed me to share my excitement for math. I focus on the problem-solving, almost puzzle-like aspect of mathematics and show students how fun solving problems could be. I share my passion for the subject with students who had the very opposite view of mathematics as me and, by the end of each semester, students began to have fun with the problems with me! My passion gives them motivation to persevere through their homework. My time in the Math Lab has helped me discover my value of passion in the classroom. I want to share my excitement for math with my students just like what I have done in the Math Lab. I have found that, if learners care for and like the subject they are learning about,

Growing up, I would always force my five brothers to sit down outside on the grass and play school with me. I was, of course, the teacher, and I would give each one of my brothers some paper and a pencil to write down notes. I loved teaching them what I had learned in class that day, it gave me a feeling of joy knowing that I taught them something I actually understood. From there on, I knew that I wanted to be an elementary teacher. I want to help children learn and be able to see the joy on their face when they learn something new as well. During my elementary years, I enjoyed school but as I advanced into high school, I did not enjoy classes much. Being shy, I was always nervous to talk to my teachers and ask for help so I would ask my friends to ask for me. When I was in junior year of high school, I had an English teacher who always encouraged us to go up to her and ask her for help with anything we needed. I was really hesitant to ask, but I did and realized that she was genuinely there for her students. She was the only teacher that I actually felt comfortable speaking to. She made me feel like I was a student in the classroom and helped me enjoy my last years of high school. Every child should be comfortable with their teachers and feel important in that class. Sadly, there are not very many teachers that can actually provide that space for their students. Now that I am older I see so far beyond and want to be a person who makes a positive impact on a child's life.

As an 8th grader, I realized what I wanted to do. I was playing sports for a local Christian school in Milledgeville, GA. As I watched the good and not so good relationships the students had with their teachers and coaches. I decided then that I wanted to be one of the teachers that the kids loved. The athletic director at the time was the most influential individual that helped me realize my passion and how I could follow my passion and work at the same time. My passions have always included at least one of the following: children, sports, and helping children learn. Each passion presents an opportunity to incorporate my main reasons for teaching. My main reasons for wanting to be a teacher are because I want to help students overcome things they do not understand; to provide a safe, loving, reliable, and a trustworthy family atmosphere; to instill attributes of commitment, persistence, determination, and loyalty.

“Mathematics” is a polarizing word for many people and very often it evokes numerous personal reactions, commonly an anxiety reaction. Surprisingly, I am not speaking here only about students, but more importantly about the people who teach mathematics. As the study done by Alan B. Bates, Nancy I. Latham, and Jin-ah Kim indicated, many teachers have fears about teaching mathematics and how teachers’ fears influence students, their learning outcomes, and how mathematics has impacted them in their years of teaching. These finding are also relevant to how I felt about teaching math due to lack confidence in my teaching abilities of mathematical content knowledge. However, as I am reflecting on this past semester that I spent learning about math trajectories as well as math content knowledge, I feel much more confident in exposing my students to math. I think that mathematics is not an easy concept to teach and it requires good strategies to be a successful teacher, but if we do not try to teach it, we will never gain confidence in it.

“In the end, all learners need your energy, your heart, and your mind. They have that in common because they are young humans. How they need you, however, differs. Unless we understand and respond to those differences, we fail many leaners” (Tomlinson, 2001, p. 15). In the beginning of the year, my students and I got through the highly anticipated first few days of school full of expectations, community builders, and fun, when I quickly learned I had a classroom of “math haters.” When I surveyed my class, I found out the majority of my students thought math was boring and hard, and there was a strong dislike of math. While I collected my own data on them as well, via grades and watching how they worked, I realized

While teachers and educators impact the surfeit of knowledge we end up with in the future, they are very important individuals in the world and they have a significant job in which they spend more than enough time assisting other individuals with a topic or a common objective. There are various requirements and setbacks a person has to overcome in order to be qualified for the career. Teaching is often looked at as a job but it is also a way of life. Individuals go through years of schools and institutions to acquire the knowledge and skills they need. Many people assume that there is only one branch of teaching; however, there are countless educators and professions in the world we live in today.

People often say, “Find your passion, and make it your career and you will never work a day in your life.” This never rang true to me until I became a teacher. Five years ago I worked as a manager in the financial aid department at a local technical school. Prior to that job I spent 17 years in the business industry in various leadership roles. However, it was not until I completed my Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management and someone encouraged me to pursue my dream of teaching that my world became complete.