Students Becoming Teachers
By Avery Harber
For many students, the main goal has always been to graduate, and then move onto college, the military, or the workforce and never look back. But for other students, coming back to school is exactly what they want. However, as a teacher, rather than a student.
One such student is senior Morgan Gardner, who feels that it’s always been her plan to become a music teacher. She loves making music and says that it’s one of her biggest passions. She says that she’s able to pick up on it easily, and in her past experiences of teaching people music, she thinks she’s done a good job.
“I've always had a passion for helping people,” she said, “and combining my two favorite things in the world just seemed like something that was right.”
Morgan Gardner plans to teach music.
Her previous aspiration was a bit different, as she wanted to be a forensic anthropologist when she was young. However, she decided that science wasn’t for her and has been on board with being a music teacher ever since.
Gardner says that although she had already wanted to teach music, her own music teacher, Ms. Elana Camp, showed her that “it was more than just teaching music, it's about developing a family.”
Gardner says she has thought a lot about her career path and the specifics of her plan. She wants to do a semester of her student teaching in Spain, but once she gets her teaching license, she will have to stay and teach in Indiana for five years to fulfill certain scholarship requirements. Afterward she wouldn't be opposed to going elsewhere. She wants to work either with middle or high school kids, and says that she doesn’t “have the patience for little kids.”
On the other side of that spectrum, senior Ashton Painter wants to teach kids in the second to fourth grade age group, because “at that age they start to understand what they are being taught better, and they are still at the age where they want to learn.”
She says she’s been inspired to teach by all her former teachers who genuinely loved their job and made it fun. The most inspirational person for her, though, was her second grade teacher. She says she really made her want to teach that age group, because of how much she learned from her.
Ashton Painter hopes to teach at the elementary level.
The most important thing to Ashton isn’t where she teaches, just that she definitely wants to be an elementary teacher.
“The kids enjoy learning and I get to teach different subjects and I don't have to teach the same subject all year long,” she said.
Ashton said as she considered or thought about other careers, teaching would return to the top of her list.
“I would always come back to teaching because I've always wanted to do it. I love working with little kids and inspiring them to learn. When they understand what they are being taught and the light goes on in their head it is the best feeling to a teacher, because they knew they accomplished something.”
Shooting back up in the age range, senior Katelyn Wade wants to teach older students in high school or college about art education. She says she feels that “the arts are especially important for young adults.”
Katelyn Wade intends to teach art at the high school or college levels.
For her, art teachers Ms. Alicia Fuller and Mrs. Helen Zacek are her inspirations.
“I want to be able to encourage and teach in fun ways like Zacek and Fuller do.”
She says she’d definitely like to stay and teach in this area, even back at Delta if a spot ever opened up, and plans to stay nearby in her college choice as well and go to Ball State University.