Growing up, I always thought I wanted to work with children but wasn’t convinced I would go into education. I come from a long line of educators, my great-grandfather, grandfather, as well as both of my parents all worked in schools. When I went to college, I was unsure if I truly wanted to follow in the footsteps of my family. It took an international trip to Africa to show me that education had been my path all along.
When I was a Junior in college going into my senior year, I worked as an international intern in Nyeri Kenya where I worked in a destitute children’s home. While working with the students and community, I was able to shadow a school counselor. I realized in that experience that my love for helping others and the enjoyment I got from working with kids could be found in the perfect career as a school counselor. After I graduated from college I went straight into graduate school to get my masters in school counseling. My family jokes that even though my Dad ended his career as a middle school counselor, it took me flying half way across the world to realize that was my passion as well!
I am currently working as an elementary counselor in an elementary school with students K-5. I previously worked at the middle level with students 6-8. I am relatively new to the education profession, but I find that each new experience allows me to learn new things about myself and furthers my passion to work with students.
As I stated previously, I am new to the education field. Keeping the passion that I feel now for teaching and working with students as a new educator is something I think about a lot, and I want to aspire to do as I move throughout my career. Like any profession, the longer you do it the more you can grow to feel burned out. My hope is that I can continue to grow as I learn more and more about being an educator. My main goal in life, not only professionally, is to help others. I think continuing to educate myself in the world of school counseling will help me feed that desire to help others; as well as keep me in the education profession for many years to come.
My main hope for education is to allow everyone to realize that we have to teach the whole child. As a school counselor, mental health is something I identify as a key piece in a child’s success. If we don’t understand the outside factors that affect our student’s lives, we can never hope to understand how to help them academically. This was something I observed a lot growing up. There would be students in my class who I knew had so much stuff going on with them in the outside world, but our teachers never tried to understand why that specific student was acting the way they were.
I know this is not the case with all educators, I have seen first-hand teachers go above and beyond for their students every day. However, it is easy sometimes for us as adults to forget what it is like to be a kid and all the things that can distract you in a day. My hope is that as we continue to learn as educators, and we can continue to challenge ourselves to see the whole child. This is something I can forget to do myself, but I always want to push myself to work on looking at the entire picture and not just what I see of a student at first glance.