As I sit and enjoy a loud, aggressive soccer game at Lees McRae College, I remember my college days at Indiana State University in Terre Haute Indiana. Those were the days to where I was a young carefree student receiving an education on a volleyball scholarship. I was getting a solid education while I played volleyball. What would that education be, a professional volleyball player, a teacher, a nurse, a social worker, or an athletic trainer? Time would only tell.

My first year in college, I had no idea what I wanted to study, freshman usually don’t know. All I knew was that during my childhood, I acquired the education discourse since my mother work as a secretary at St. Monica’s Catholic Elementary School. One could say that I was a “school rat” because I hung around the school and teachers all the time. It wasn’t until the summer after my first year that I had a revelation of what I wanted to do with my life.

That summer, I worked at a beautiful church camp up in southern Michigan. While at the camp, I worked as a counselor who taught the young children crafts, songs, canoeing and archery. I was also one of the lifeguards who taught the daily swimming lessons to all the children who couldn’t swim well. Oh the joy I felt as I watched Sally, a little 5 year old, who was afraid of the water, put her face under the water to find a diving stick. Excitement and pleasure fill my heart as Jason swam from the wall to the middle of the three-foot where I was waiting. The satisfaction on their faces said it all. It was an awesome feeling that I had inside and took back to school the following semester.

With this newly found excitement of wanting to be a teacher, I went back to school and declared my major as an Elementary education major. Once I started working at the campus elementary school, I was drawn toward the students who needed extra help in reading. I guess I enjoyed working with those students who struggled academically because as a child I struggled academically as well.

I remember at the earliest age, I struggled with reading. Words just didn’t make sense to me. I had a rough time with pronouncing words and comprehending what I so slowly read. I remember that I had to go to several remedial classes or special reading classes to work on sounding letters out and eventually blending the letters into sounds that made words. Phonetics didn’t work for me because I just didn’t get it. I guess I memorized many of the words, which didn’t help when I had to read the bigger and harder words. I remember listening to tapes with the correct sounds of the short and long vowels as well as the consonants. Even though I struggled with reading, I wasn’t placed into a Special Education class like kids are today because they didn’t have that at a catholic school. I was considered a slow learner who had to work extremely hard to be able to read. Reading is what I learned to love because I was successful after it finally clicked for me.

With this feeling of wanting to open up a new world for children, by ways of books, I felt this long deep desire inside me that wanted to teach children how to read. Not just any children, but like I said before, children who struggled with academics. I chose the Special Education field to compliment my Elementary Education major because my oldest brother is handicapped and I struggled terribly in school. I wanted to give what I could to teach little ones to read, like my teachers had taught me.

In conclusion, it was not only one thing that made me decide to become a teacher. It was the combination of my mother’s occupation, working at a church camp, my oldest brother being handicapped and I struggling through school. Even though there is days that I wonder why I became a teacher, all I have to do is remember what guided me to this wonderful occupation.