A Dream to Educate: Pursuing My Aspiration as a Teacher
My Teaching Aspiration (sample)
To reflect on my aspiration as a teacher, I start this essay with my background. I am the daughter of two Mexican immigrants and was raised in an impoverished community of color without the ability to speak or read in English for a major part of my childhood. Because of this, it was difficult to dream of something as big as going to college when the concept itself was foreign to my family and friends. I never considered that I would one day aspire to become a teacher. At one point in life, it did not cross my mind that I would one day graduate from high school and attend a four-year university. Though a college degree was recommended, achieving such feat was never expected of me. To make matters worse, my teachers never advocated for my peers and I to pursue a degree. In fact, school administrators advised my classmates and I on the first day of high school to forever engrave that period of time into our minds considering that many of us would never make it to graduation. For this reason, I hated school and most importantly, I detested teachers. Fortunately, I transferred out of that school and to this day, I consider it the best thing to have ever happened to me. I was fortunate to have witnessed different methods of teaching at both schools and I take that into consideration for my own practice each and every day. The new school’s atmosphere was enriching and lively throughout; from the students who took pride in being there to the teachers that truly believed in the success of their students.
My curiosity and thirst for knowledge were sparked as never before. I owe this to the East staff, students, and most importantly, my English teacher. An immigrant from Tehran, Iran, and a graduate from an under-performing high school in that state of Colorado, this teacher’s experience resonated with me in a way that my previous educators had never. I valued and appreciated her difficult narrative, for she gave me hope. Moreover, she cultivated an environment in which my peers and I acknowledged the presence of one another and deemed ourselves worthy members of a learning community. My teacher’s pedagogy was culturally-rooted, fostering the needs of diverse learners. It rehumanized the educational space through its emphasis on the development of the moral and ethical core. The dedication my teacher put forth to empower her pupils was influential and ultimately shaped my interest in teaching.
Since my experiences in high school, I have gone on to work toward a Bachelor’s in English and emphasized secondary education. I have learned about issues in education that alter the success of students, matters as broadly intricate as the racial inequalities at school to issues dealt with at home. For example, during the fall semester of 2017, I was placed at McAuliffe International School for my field placement. The majority of the sixth-grade students came from affluent backgrounds and already had their eyes set on college. Meanwhile, students at Bruce Randolph School (BRS), where I tutor, were struggling to compose adequate sentences even though they were older than the more academically competitive students at McAuliffe. One’s zip-code should not impact how much or how little of an education one is granted, yet these two schools – which are only a few minutes apart – are greatly dissimilar. In racial make-up, one school is primarily white and has ample resources, while the other is significantly Latinx and vastly under-resourced. My experiences at BRS have energized my advocacy for addressing not only the systematic issues related to resources in urban schools, but also the need to support students who have been traditionally marginalized and underrepresented.
Through my work with the Center for Urban Education and support from my practicum experiences, I have built my capacity to establish respectful relationships with students to best assess issues which may affect their role in and out of the classroom. One of the most effective ways this has been made possible is by always acknowledging my students, their lived experiences, and cultural identities. I have taken this teaching ideology into my current work with DC-21, an alternative school for at-risk students. Many of the students come from low-income backgrounds and affiliate themselves with local gangs. For this reason, school-wide supports are necessary, particularly when dealing with behavioral functions as well as learning disabilities and interrupted schooling that have impacted their educational identities. I am wary of the discrepancies linked to emotional or behavioral disorders and learning disabilities. Moreover, I have learned of the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculums, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS) frameworks, and individual educational plans (IEP) that better support students of all learning styles and skill levels. From my experiences as a high school student and involvements in the classroom as a pre-service teacher, I have a deep desire to earn a master’s in education.
More specifically, I want to build my pedagogical knowledge and practice for supporting urban students in special education. I am eager to understand how to best diagnose and address both, learning disabilities and behavioral concerns that arise for linguistically and culturally diverse students in urban classrooms. Currently, there are school-readiness gaps, cultural norms understood as misbehaviors, and teacher-student disparities that negatively influence students from low-income neighborhoods. These differences are often complicated both by misdiagnosis and a lack of resources and trained personnel who can incorporate effective IEPs that could support our children of color. Rather than contributing to negative statistics, I want to build my pedagogical skills in order to be an advocate of change and transformation.
In correlation with my goals and beliefs, I owe it to scholars such as Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade and Christine E. Sleeter who have deeply impacted my critical pedagogy perspectives. They believe culturally relevant pedagogy is essential in assisting the students’ approach and comprehension about race and society and promote a diversification of voice and an anti-oppressive stance in education. I seek to follow in their frames and that of Paulo Freire as well, who writes about the systematic oppression that exists within the realm of education and that one must dismantle the dominant scheme through the redesign of education itself as a means to inspire, empower, and liberate those who are oppressed. Like them and other critical educators, I hope to disrupt the banking methods that normally permeate school practices and learning environments to instead foster a rigorous academic environment nurtured by curiosity and eagerness to learn.
I aim to enhance the capabilities of pupils to develop rational and logical assessments in and out of the classroom, as a means to live fruitfully liberated and productive lives as members of society regardless of race and socioeconomic status. This includes those who have been ostracized in the educational space as a result of discriminatory practices by reason of disability. In order to achieve such feat, I must learn how to incorporate cultural synthesis, critical consciousness, inclusion practices, and other matters as well; conversely, I must work in cooperation with my pupils and colleagues to improve student learning, hence liberation cannot simply be granted, and is instead a mutual process. I want to be able to do all of these things while honoring culturally relevant or sustaining pedagogy that is inclusive to all students.
My interest in studying at Boston College has expanded from conversations I have had with numerous people, who had a great deal of information about the program given the fact that she recently graduated from there. Boston College provides an ideal climate for me to develop my interests in the field of education. I am particularly interested in the Donovan Urban Teaching Scholars program, a unique option that distinguishes Boston College from that of other institutions. I not only believe that I am qualified to perform a service to society as an urban school-teacher, but I am convinced that Boston College possesses the value of education that can best assist me in fulfilling my goals.
