Journey to Becoming a Teacher

• School has always been a major part of my life. I have no siblings and I grew up in a single-parent family, so school was where I could gain interesting new knowledge and be with my friends. For the most part I had great teachers who I looked up to as role models. Everyone else loved professional development days, snow days, teacher strikes, and holidays, but I dreaded days when I didn’t have to go to school. Part of why I decided to become a teacher is my love of the school environment and the sense of camaraderie involved.

Vignette

• I was born in Taiwan and immigrated to Canada with my parents when I was eight years old. To make sure that I did not forget my native language, my mother home schooled me in Mandarin in addition to sending me to public school where I learned everything in English. She brought textbooks from Taiwan and made me copy selections of Chinese literature. While that may seem very boring, she did make things interesting by taking me to all kinds of Chinese cultural events such as music performances, art exhibits, and lectures. At the time I hated it, but in hindsight I am very grateful that she made sure I maintained connections to my cultural heritage. This influenced my decision to teach Mandarin and share my love for my native culture with my future students.

Vignette #2

• Throughout my university days, I did a lot of tutoring for elementary and high school English. I had a student who had very little English writing skills when she first arrived in Vancouver from Hong Kong. When I first started tutoring her, her writing was incomprehensible. She had no sense of sentence structure or punctuation, but as the weeks went on, I noticed her writing improve immensely. She attributed her improvement to me giving her interesting and relevant writing topics every week that gave her opportunities to practice her English writing skills outside of school. I was glowing with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Moments like these when I see my efforts and my students’ efforts pay off are what motivate me to continue in my career as an educator.