Baltimore
Second Year Teaching Fellow
In my previous career, I felt like I wasn’t really doing anything helpful. I wanted to be on the front lines of education. The first year of Urban Teachers was rigorous. It was a heavy course load, but it was information we needed. There were no courses that we don’t apply every day.
My first year in my own classroom as a kindergarten teacher was busy, but it would have been so much harder without the residency year. The experience I had gained in my residency helped a lot.
The whole teaching process includes a lot of reflection and adjustment. We do so much more than teaching kids about letters and numbers. We are literally teaching them how to be human beings, how to interact with other children.
One student last year, whenever he got mad, he would throw a tantrum and hide under the table. But by the end of the school year, he was helping other students deal with their emotions. A girl arrived at the start of the year unable to recognize any letters. She left being able to write sentences. You see growth in every child. And there is never a day when they don’t make me laugh.