Bringing Life Experience into the Classroom

The great thing about having left the education profession at the ripe age of 21 without completing my certificate was that I now had life under me. Some people immediately know what and where they are meant to be, for me I had to find it organically through a list of ups and downs in the real world.

 Dabbling in ‘Corporate America’ with one of the largest Pharmaceutical companies and riding out the recession.

 

Running a large retail store

 

 

 

 

 Selling homes

 

 

 

Fighting through the jungle that was ‘Corporate America’ I was able to see how valuable the writing skills I had attained could be. Writing business plans, business reports and year end goals and summaries where just a few of the things my team had me writing for our district. Working in home sales and writing between mortgage underwriters and seeing first-hand the poor level of grammar, and even rudimentary punctuation had me questioning where these individuals had gone to school; and it was not until I worked in management for a large a retail clothing store and managed mostly high school seniors, just graduated high school students and young ‘twenty-something’s’, of a different generation than my own, that I saw that maybe they had been failed somewhere along the line. It seemed to me that approximately 80% that I was working with were not where I would consider ‘college ready’. This was not based off of any standardized test, but my personal assessment as a manager trying to develop future management from within this generation and realizing I was stepping into a writing teaching position after all. It was in this moment in particular, and other moments outside the education field that brought me to two realizations. One, that there was something happening to a generation of children who were not prepared writing wise for the real world, and two, that I would always be an educator no matter what field I was working in. It was just in my nature.

In short, these experiences cultivated learning that will make me a better, more patient, and more 'real world' educated teacher. As a prospective educator I have learned from these experiences to take time with students, validate them and their concerns, take those concerns seriously, walk beside them on a portion of their literary journey and hopefully they will write about me as a positive note on their literary timeline someday.

What are some experiences you have thus far in life that you feel give you a unique perspective? It can be any experience, and does not need to relate back to the classroom or school in anyway. List one or more experiences, and how you feel they make you who you are.
Write 200-500 words and bring them in on Wednesday to place in your portfolios. I will answer any questions you may have in class tomorrow.
(45 points)