Introductions

I grew up in a town populated with a whopping 200 people. Actually, I didn't even grow up in town, but on a ranch 30 miles away from town...a ranch thirty miles north in the Missouri River Breaks. Don't worry, I know about people and all that stuff. I'm not totally ignorant to it. In fact, I would venture to say that I know more people than most...or at least know more people well (roughly 200 of them). A community of such a diminutive size can be likened to an enormous family. Everyone knows everything about everyone else, or so they think. And if they don't, they make it up and it is believed by the majority of the community. Interesting huh? Yeah, but I'm happy to have lived in Bozeman for the past five years.

I started out school in Cell Biology and Neuroscience. I never realized how difficult college would be considering I skated through high-school with straight A's (except a B in choir, and I was the only Alto so that's just bullshit) and graduated as valedictorian (a class of seven, but I'm still pretty proud of it). College life didn't work out so well at first. I guess you can't just drink every day and expect to do well in school. Hindsight is 20/20 indeed. Luckily, I got it together right around my second year, realized that Biology wasn't for me (four-hour labs, not a fan), and switched my major to Psychology with a minor in English. Then I realized that Psychology is sort of a dead-end for a person who doesn't plan to go to graduate school and thus decided to add a second major of English Education.

To be perfectly honest, I worked through three straight years English Ed. classes and really didn't know if I wanted to be a teacher. I just wanted to get through school. Then I went to South Africa for a semester and it changed my life. I am well aware that that sounds a tad cliche, but it is the truth. I was a volunteer coordinator for an after-school program called  "The Kayamandi Project" in which I would spend several hours a week with kids in a nearby township. If you don't know anything about South Africa, know that townships are where the black people live. Kayamandi was a dirty, crime-ridden, poverty-stricken place directly outside the beautiful, upscale town I was living in. Surrounded by wine farms, the township was like a blemish on the countryside. A place allocated for black people, and black people alone. The goal of the program was to provide supplemental education in Math and English. I wrote lesson plans, created activities, and bossed around a whole bunch of volunteers...and let me tell you, that last part really, really, really, sucked. A lot. Aside from my run-ins with surly volunteers, the experience is one of the most amazing I have ever had. I got to see kids learn. Learn because I was teaching them. It solidified my decision. Now I am ready to be an English Teacher. I also would like to teach Math one day, but that's a different story.

So here I am, in my sixth year of college. I got my graduation paperwork in last week and am working on my student teaching application. Am I ready to become a teacher? Absolutely not. Is anyone ready for such a challenge? I doubt it. But do I want to become a teacher? I sure do.