Since before I can remember, I have wanted to be a teacher. My whole life I’ve been lucky enough to know what I wanted to do when I grew up: Be a Teacher! (Although I am still working on the “growing up” part).

I had a lucky experience of growing up with my mom as a teacher. She actually was my P.E. teacher in elementary school until I was in grade 4. Looking up to my mother and seeing her passion for her students fueled my desire to do the same one day from a very young age. From sometime during that early elementary school experience I made the decision that teaching is what I wanted to do and my goal has never changed.

As I grew up I had some very influential teachers in my life. One in particular named John Kozak was a teacher of mine in grade 8 and 9. To be honest, he was not a very good teacher in terms of actually helping us learn the curriculum, but his love and passion for his students was undeniable. This passion for getting to know and growing the inner “person” within his students is something I will always strive to have.

I grew up heavily involved in sports. I played every organized sport imaginable as I grew up. This love for sports was the medium through which I first began teaching/coaching youth. I began coaching elementary school basketball with my mother when I was in grade 11, and there has not been a year since where I was not volunteer coaching or working with young students.

This volunteering led me to a job with the City of New Westminster as a youth leader. In this capacity I was able to hold even more of a leadership role with children/youth. As part of my job I ran a “boys group” for underprivileged students between the ages of 11-14. It was through this capacity that I cemented the fact that I needed to become a teacher. Developing relationships with these boys and working with them was an unbelievable experience, and one that enlightened me to how important it is to have positive adult role models in a young person’s life.

The last element that led to me becoming a teacher was my academic struggles. I have a learning disability which severely hinders my written processing speeds. At first i refused to be diagnosed because I refused to have a “label” as a student. I managed to get through high school with a very supportive family and extra help outside of school. Eventually, however, my struggles in university forced me, to much of my chagrin, to go get a diagnosis; without it i was not going to succeed. Needless to say, throughout my academic career I have faced people on both ends of the spectrum in terms of how teachers and professors treated me as a learner. Both positive and negative experiences have driven my passion to be in a position to influence and show empathy for all different types of learners with different needs and different attitudes regarding their own situations.