I was the one with my stuffed animals piled in a row with me at the chalkboard teaching them. In high school I was the vice president of the Future Teachers of America club. I went to the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign thinking I’d teach kindergarten. My love of learning dragged me in a different direction, so I ended up with Bachelor of Science in Consumer and Textile Marketing (yay for fashion!) Years later, my figure skating coach asking me to coach one of her students a few days a week. The teaching fire was lit again! Thankfully, when I studied for my Master’s degree, I learned that I took so many science classes (of so many varieties) in my BS degree that I had more than enough credits to get a middle school general science endorsement. That made me very happy because I love teaching middle school, and I love science. It was a perfect fit.
Living the dream...
I taught middle school science for 8 years and coached a Science Olympiad team to Nationals 3 out of 4 years. My family moved to Illinois, and I fell upon the opportunity to teach middle school STEM, a brand new curriculum that I was fortunate enough to invent. I worked with the other 2 STEM teachers in our district to develop a STEM program that is still used today. Years later, there at Franklin STEAM Academy, we secured a multi-million dollar grant to create a makerspace and an entirely new way of teaching. I created yet another curriculum to teach the use of and safety in the makerspace while organizing and supporting other teachers' use of the makerspace. When my family moved to Indiana, I gave high school a try and temporarily taught two PLTW engineering classes- Introduction to Engineering Design and Civil Engineering and Architecture. The next year I began a brand new program at Crestview Elementary, teaching STEAM to grades 1-6.
Eureka!
At one point I looked back at all of my teaching and realized- I really love teaching middle school. Teaching high school was fun too. Teaching elementary was a blast! Eureka!I just love teaching :). There’s nothing else I can imagine doing because teaching is so clearly what I was meant to do.