“From a career perspective becoming a teacher was always a goal of mine, for a long time I didn’t thing it was a realistic goal because I knew how much schooling and certification was into it , luckily Florida offers alternative programs so if you didn’t have masters in education you can still get a teacher certification, I took full advantage of that and I actually finished it during the pandemic.I didn’t always teach but even when I was a teenager and as a young adult i always mentored younger children and throughout my life I’ve had other jobs in this area , whether it was a camp counselor or an after school tutor,I have always interacted with young people in my professional career.
I chose social studies in college ,that’s when I became very interested in history and it also happened that I was getting very good grades in history but I actually started college as a psychology major and then I realized there is way to much science and a lot of classes that kind of turned me away from continuing my psychology major to where once I reached that decision that I wanted to transition away I realized that I wanted to major in history , then the path to teaching became a little bit more clear.
My favorite thing about being a teacher is seeing the sense of accomplishment on students that have struggled to challenging material and they persevered, and they were able to reach their own goals while helping them reach them. As a teacher I want to continue to help my students be successful, so. For this year with all the Cambridge classes I’m teaching my goal is to help those students pass the Cambridge exams that they will be taking. As a long-term career goal, I think I would be interested in becoming a college instructor but that would take a lot more schooling on my part, so I haven’t put much consideration onto that yet.
When I was asked to start teaching Cambridge classes, to me it demonstrated that the administration or somebody up there decided that I would be good at it, so it seemed like it was a payoff for the work I put in these last couple of years.When I graduated college, I took a lot of time of between finding a career and I was just working from one job to another. I worked at Disney for five years and I think it was because I hadn’t considered teaching as a realistic job, it was a dream, but it wasn’t my reality until I moved to Florida.
I have seen that students in Cambridge classes are more driven and willing to put in. The extra effort to achieve their goals but I think that kind of inherit in the type of students that pursue Cambridge classes. Although yes, a lot of my students very intelligent it is more so that they are more willing to put in the effort, there is a big difference between being smart and being good.
From a personal perspective I would give them[students] the advice that yes grades in high school are important, it is important to take advantage of the opportunities given to you and know which ones[opportunities] are out there for you, but it is also important to experience life and don’t make academics the only thing that is important to you. The last few years have taught me that if you take life too seriously you are not going to make it out alive, so have fun,” high-school teacher Steven Johnson said.
