THE TEACHER I WANTED, BUT NEVER GOT

The Teacher I Wanted, But Never Got

Kali Lively

University of Houston Clear Lake

THE TEACHER I WANTED, BUT NEVER GOT

As a future teacher, I think I would characterize myself as a motivating, caring, and

nurturing. My hope is to be one that is remembered for putting the effort in to help my

students. I have and many teachers positively influence me, but I’ve also had a few that I can’t

even remember their names. They never helped shape me into who I am today. I’ve thankfully

had more positive experiences than negative ones, so there are many teachers I’d consider role

models. There are a few that I really enjoyed them as a person, like my third-grade teacher Mr.

Grobbel. He is the first teacher I remember really enjoying as a person. He always made

learning fun and his classroom was one of my favorite places to be at the time. Then there was

my fourth through fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Wright, was the sweetest and most genuine teacher

I’d had at the time. She cared so deeply for every one of her students, and there wasn’t a time

during those two years that I didn’t feel equal or unimportant in in comparison to my peers.

However, from fifth-grade until my Sophomore year, I didn’t feel as though I mattered as a

student. It was discouraging and I was very unmotivated to even show up to school most days.

My sophomore year of high school was my first full year in as a student Texas. In a

desperate need to fill up my schedule with an elective class, I took Mrs. Heatley’s interior

design class. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. Mrs. Heatley really

changed the game for me. She made learning fun again and I knew as soon as I stepped into her

classroom that she is exactly the kind of teacher I wanted to be. She helped me in more ways

than I even knew at the time. I grew up in Colorado and we moved to Texas during the last

couple of weeks my freshman year of high school. I don’t remember much about middle school

because of my parents divorcing and I did a lot of back and forth between houses so I may have

just chosen to forget about that time, but once we move to Texas, I really started thinking
THE TEACHER I WANTED, BUT NEVER GOT

about my future and knew teaching is the direction I wanted to go. Mrs. Heatley really

encouraged me to join clubs and organizations to help me in that aspect. She lit a fire in me and

got me motivated to focus on my career. I joined Family, Career, and Community Leaders of

America (FCCLA), that year which is an organization that promotes character development,

creative and critical thinking, interpersonal communication, practical knowledge, and career

preparation. FCCLA helped me professionally by allowing me to be involved in officer positions

as well as activities and observations at local elementary schools. Through competitions with

FCCLA, these hands-on opportunities, and taking Mrs. Heatley’s classes for three years,

including co-op classes, it solidified my career choice and I knew really wanted to become

involved with schools and teach.

While I’ve had a couple teachers really inspire me to want to be an educator, there

hasn’t been a single teacher that has sparked a love of writing for me. Writing is one of those

scary subjects for me and at the same time, I know how unavoidable it is in this profession.

Writing papers is something that has always intimidated me, and I lack confidence in my ability

to write quality papers. I think this stems from not being taught how to properly draft, edit, or

write papers. This worries me, not only for my own college career, but for when I have my own

students and will need to teach them everything I am supposed to know when it comes to

writing. How can I be trusted to teach my students the basic skills when I don’t even feel I am

up to par on these skills? With the writing for educators’ class I feel as if I can learn enough to

help my students but there are three goals I’ll need to set for myself first. I know in order for

these goals to be realistic expectations for my students, I’ll have to be able to attain these

attributes myself.
THE TEACHER I WANTED, BUT NEVER GOT

The first goal I want for myself and my students is to become more comfortable in the

writing process. This includes brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing and even publishing. This

is one of my biggest problems as a student and is why writing papers gives me so much anxiety.

I have learned more about writing papers in these first couple of months of my junior year of

college than I have in my entire student career. I struggle when it comes to formulating a topic,

getting my ideas down and making my writing naturally cohesive. I also have a hard time

revising and editing my papers, I am usually the kind of person who writes the paper and never

looks at it again. These steps in the process are uncomfortable for me because I don’t typically

like others, besides the professor, to read my work. With that said, this is something I want to

come naturally to my students. I want them to value the entire process and always be

comfortable with peer editing and input.

My second goal that I’d like to help myself and my future students, is that I want them

to be more reflective in types of writing they choose to do. I want them to pick topics that have

specific meaning to them or something that they genuinely want to know more about. For

myself, I again just pick topics for papers to usually get the job done. Because the idea of

writing terrifies me, choosing reflective topics is not something I generally do. I want differently

for my future students. I’d like for them to pick topics that they can relate to through

experiences or have opinions on. This can give them the opportunity to gain self-knowledge,

facilitate their own learning and can give them a better understand of what they’re learning

and writing about.

My last goal that I want for my students is I want them to want to write for fun. I want

writing to be an enjoyable subject for them. I don’t want them to struggle throughout their
THE TEACHER I WANTED, BUT NEVER GOT

student and professional career because writing is unavoidable. I want them to spend some

time daily writing about whatever they’d like or with a short prompt, for at least ten minutes. I

can’t hardly remember a time in school where I was given time daily to write about anything or

even a short prompt. For myself, I think if I had been given the opportunity to do this every day,

I would be less intimidated with the idea of writing in general. This is also good for other areas

of writing, such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, and even hand writing.

Ethically, I already have a good idea of what kind of teacher I’d like to be. I’ve had

enough positive and negative role models in my life that I feel as if I am heading in the right

direction. However, I am still learning how to become a good and confident writer, so while

these goals are for my future students’ I want to be able to attain these goals for myself. I am

nowhere near a professional and I am also learning every day in order to better myself and the

quality of teaching I give to my future students. Without the both positive and negative

influences I’ve had as a student, I don’t think I wouldn’t be able to reflect on these issues. I will

focus on these goals myself so I can become the teacher I needed, but never got.