BlakeTellFinal

Foundations of College Writing Dr. Sherry Tell Final Shawna Blake

__**Teaching is a Selfless Act**__

When I first hear someone described as educated, I think of a person with good grades and a high IQ. However, when I truly think about it, there are many ways a person can be considered educated. To me, being educated means that a person has the will and internal motivation to learn new things. Every person can be educated in their own way. They can know some information about a lot of different topics, or they could know a lot of information about only a couple topics. I feel a person can not become educated if they don't truly want to be. They can sit through as many high school and college classes as they want to, but if they don't truly want to learn, they won't. A person can memorize all the information they need to know for one test and do well, but then forget everything a couple days later. Therefore, they did not truly learn the material they studied and it is no longer a part of their knowledge. To be considered educated, one must also pass on their knowledge to someone in need. One must be completely selfless and want to help another simply for the joy of knowing they did something good. “You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” - John Bunyan. This quote describes my exact thoughts on an education; it is not enough to have knowledge, to be considered educated one must share their knowledge where they can.

__**I Can Never Repay My Teacher, But That's Okay:**__ While growing up, I always possessed a passion for not only learning, but teaching as well. I was "that kid" who loved being in school and couldn't wait to go back every day. When we got bored, My brother and I would play school at home and I would always be the teacher even though he is two years older than me and smarter. I had an appreciation for all my teachers and I looked up to each one of them. It wasn't until 7th grade, however, that I knew for certain I wanted to be a teacher and I would do anything to become one.

Seventh grade was one of my favorite school years because I felt like I was on some reality TV show. There was always so much drama everywhere since everyone was going through puberty and such. I had a group of friends that consisted of me and four other girls. We did everything together and everyone knew we were best friends. About three fourths of the way through the school year, one of the girls in our group started to become really annoying and mean. She would lie about everything and we would always catch her in her lies and then when we would ask her why she lied she was always really rude to us. The four of us decided that we didn't want to be friends with her anymore, so we stopped hanging out and didn't talk to her.

One day after reading class, my teacher asked my friend and me if our other two friends were close by. We told her they were out in the hallway and she asked if we could go get them and meet her back in the classroom. We knew exactly why we were being asked to meet with our teacher, but we were a little confused. Questions such as "why does she even care if we're not friends anymore" and "what business does she have with our problems" were passed in our dialogue on the way back to the classroom. As we explained what happened to our teacher she was smiling and listening the whole time. After we all finished chiming in with our opinions, my teacher simply told us that what seems to be a big issue now, will not be worth the fight in the end. She advised us to at least try to be friends with the girl again and push away all the judgments we had. We all left together as we mumbled angrily because we all knew she was right but no one wanted to admit it. We went up to our friend, apologized for excluding her, and reaccepted her into our group. It was at this moment that I realized, being a teacher doesn't mean you just stand in front of a class and lecture to them; it's deeper than that. A teacher forms a bond with their students and becomes their parents outside of home. My teacher could have just ignored our problem back then, but she chose to get involved and help us out and she reformed the friendship we would have lost. This is when I realized how much opportunity there is to help people out as a teacher and I knew one day, I wanted to be just like my teacher.

To get experience with teaching, I do a lot of tutoring and babysitting right now. My mom works at a preschool and I would go there over the summer on random days and help her teach the kids their basic skills. For four years I was a Hebrew school teacher at my Temple and I loved it. Currently I babysit kids and help them with their homework since their parents are foreign and speak broken English. I am also always willing to help my friends out when the are struggling in a class I am doing well in.
 * __My Friend Will Never Repay Me, But That's Okay:__**

One recent moment that reassured me of my life choices was when I helped my friend study for math. In our statistics class, we are assigned online homework and quizzes. I am very good at math so I always get above a 90% on every assignment. My friend was having a hard time understanding the lesson and asked me if I could help him take the online quiz. He told me that he got in the 50's on our last test and gets in the 80's on pretty much every assignment. While helping him take the quiz I noticed how happy he was that he was getting the answers right, but I also noticed he was taking the quiz while looking up everything in his notes. I asked him whether he actually knew how to do the problems or if he was just basing it off the examples in the notes. He said that he was just looking at the notes and didn't actually know how to solve the problems on his own. I took this opportunity and taught him how to actually do the problems without looking at his notes and he began to understand the material.

I saw the excitement on his face when he actually knew what to do to get the answers to the problems and could get the right answers without any help. When he finished the quiz it showed him the grade of 95% and he only got points off because he rounded a number incorrectly. He started freaking out because that was the first time he did well on one of the assignments. He was so happy which made me feel great that I was able to teach him the material and make him do well. This experience reassured me that for the rest of my life I want to see that look on peoples faces and I hope to do so as a teacher.

__**My Student Will Never Repay Me, But That's Okay:**__ It's really hard for me to think of my future because I don't like to set expectations for my future life; I just take it as it comes. However, I hope that one day I will achieve my lifelong dream of becoming a teacher. To me all the hard work will pay off when I see the joy in my students faces. My goal as a teacher is not only to have them understand the class materials, but to become engaged and interested in learning it as well. It will all be worth it to me just to see a students face light up when something clicks for them and they finally understand the material. Or maybe, like my seventh grade teacher, I will help my students out with personal problems they trust to let me in on. I hope to care for my students as if they were my own children because outside of their home, I take on responsibility for them. I hope to be able to make a difference in many children's' lives and do what I love which is to help other people and make them happy.

Thinking hypothetically, one day in my future classroom I hope to knowingly make a huge impact on one of my student's lives. For example, I can picture a girl struggling to understand the steps of mitosis during class. She recently failed the mitosis quiz the class just took and there is a test on the subject tomorrow. After the period is over, I am sitting at me desk and I look up and she is standing there. The rest of the class has left and she stayed behind to ask me a question. She begins to explain how she keeps getting the name of each step mixed up with the events that take place in that step. Since she has a study hall at this time, I call her teacher and explain that she will be un my room for the period. We then go over each step together until she has a little more understanding. Then we go online and look up diagrams and models of each step so she can see exactly what happens at what time during mitosis. We then go on YouTube to look up videos on mitosis and come across some silly songs other people have created to help themselves study. Throughout the videos her face lights up more and more as she starts to really understand what is going on. The bell rings and as she leaves the room I tell her to make sure she re-watches the videos at home and looks through her notes.

The next day, she enters the classroom with a huge smile on her face and looks to me and says, "I am so ready for this test!" I smile back and hand out the tests to the class. I observe the class while they take their test to make sure no one is cheating or having any trouble. As I scan past the girl I notice she is still smiling as she is completing her test. The bell rings and every student gets up to hand in their test and go on to their next class of the day. As the girl hands in her test she looks up to me and says, "I hope I made you proud." I begin to grade the tests and I immediately pick hers up to start with. I finished going over her test and she got every single question correct. Tears actually begin to form in my eyes because like she said, she did make me proud. I really couldn't wait to give her back her test the next day.

The class is all seated and I have the tests in my arm ready to return to the students. I start handing them back and when I get to the girl I put her test down on her desk and said, "I think you're going to be happy with your grade." She immediately grabs the test off her desk and locks her eyes on the paper. She looks as if she is in pure shock and I notice her eyes becoming watery. I finish handing out the tests and continue on with the lesson for the day. As the bell rings and everyone is gone I look up from my desk and see the girl standing there once again. She looks at me straight in the eyes and says "I have never got a 100% on a test before; thank you so much." She proceeds out the door to continue her day and I sit in my chair at my desk. This feeling right now is what I have been waiting my whole career for. I worked so hard to get my degree and get a job for this single moment right here. My life now has meaning, and I am reassured this is definitely what I want to do for the rest of my life.

__**Why is it Okay?:**__ “You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” - John Bunyan. As I stated in the beginning, this quote describes exactly why I want to be a teacher in the future. I want to be able to help people without expecting anything from them in return. To me this makes a person educated, and a teachers definitely needs to be an educated person. In my past, I witnessed first hand my teacher personally going out of her way to help out me and my friends. I can not think of anyway to repay her for how much she helped us out back then. This is okay because she did not want anything in return from us; she truly just wanted to help us out and make a difference in our lives. Knowing that she helped us out in a way we never thought she would was probably enough reward for her in the end. In the present, I tutor children and I help my friends out with their homework. After I graduate, I may never even see those kids again so it is very unlikely that they will pay me back for helping them out. My friend says thank you every time I help him, but doesn't know how to fully repay me for boosting his grades. This is all okay because I don't want anything from them in return; knowing that I am helping them do the best that they can do is enough reward for me. In the future I hope to influence the lives of many children in a positive way. I hope to help them find a joy for learning and form personal relationships with my students instead of just being the teacher who lectures to them about science. I hope to help them out in ways they would never expect and not receive anything for it but my own personal joy of knowing what I have done. If I do help out a student in the way I described earlier, she will be in the position I was in as a student. She will not know how to repay me and feel like she owes me something that she can never give me. This is okay because what she doesn't know is the sense of pride she gave me knowing that I did all I could do to help her and she succeeded is enough reward for me in the end.