Katherine Pickens

People assume that because I want to teach math because I have always been phenomenal at it, but I struggled with math. It was not until I had some remarkable teachers that I began to love it. These teachers I taught me many things, but the most important was the impact you have on your student’s future. They had a choice –to invest time and energy into my success or not care whether or not I was learning. From the day I begin teaching in my classroom I also have that same choice. I can take on this huge responsibility or treat it like a job I hate. I can inspire my students and kindle excitement or just be another teacher who doesn’t care if they pass the class. I choose to be like the teachers who invested in me and inspired me to follow in their example.  

The environment I intend to create encourages excitement about learning, fosters teamwork through group discovery, and strives to acknowledge the effort and perseverance of students rather than innate intelligence. I want to challenge students to be more and do more than they think they can be. I do not want to teach them how to pass a test, but instead how to become a lifelong learner. To achieve this goal, I will analyze my curriculum and make sure it reaches all of the knowledge dimensions described in Bloom’s Taxonomy. I want to teach procedural skills that lead students to conceptualize and even reach the metacognitive level, where they will look back on their own work and improve themselves. I believe that students who achieve all these levels will have skills to achieve their life goals.

I think that my hardships in math will make me an exceptional teacher because sometimes when something is easy for you, you assume it is the same for everyone. However, when we struggle with a topic, we learn how to break it down for everyone to understand, effectively learning how to teach others in an understandable, less complicated way. I never want my students to struggle because of my explanations. I aim to be clear and concise, and always open to relevant questions. To me, the student teacher relationship is crucial to creating a thriving learning environment. My goal as a teacher is to emit qualities that deserve and earn the respect of my students. I will always be knowledgeable in my subject, prepared for every lesson, fair to every student regardless of personal feelings, open to inquiries, enthusiastic about learning and present to every student at every class. Because I understand the gravity and the importance of my job, I aspire to always be a positive influence in my students lives.