My Academic Goals

Everyday I see someone with special needs. Somewhere, sometime…every day. Either at school, or walking down the sidewalk. When I see them, I think, who helps them? Who is the one that looks after them during the day? I want to be that person. My goal is to become a special education teacher. I want to learn about teaching, and the people. I feel that the special education kids seem to be more genuine than people who have no disabilities. I want to educate them. The grade level doesn’t matter, or age. I want to spend my work day helping them, and making their day better than how it started. It may be difficult at first, but I think it will eventually get better. A good friend of mine, Ellie, is a special education student. She walked by our lunch table and asked a girl I sit with if she had a joke to tell.

Then, she started to sit with us at lunch and she started to talk to me and ask me questions. She now calls me every night and talks to me on Facebook. I wanted to be a teacher my whole life. My sisters and I would play school when we were younger. My oldest sister would be the principal, my middle sister would be the teacher and I was stuck being the student every time. I was the student so many times, that I ended up wanting to play the teacher. The more I wanted it, the more it became what I wanted to do with my life. That’s how I decided on teaching. Then I was stuck. What kind of teacher did I want to be? One reason is because every Monday night I watch The Secret Life of the American Teenager. There is a character on that show named Tom. Tom has Down syndrome. He is the funniest character on that show and he makes my mom and I laugh all the time because of the jokes he makes. Tom influenced my choice of being a special education teacher because of his personality. I was in church a couple weeks ago, and there were three people with special needs sitting in the front. One of them was across the aisle from the other two. He was waving to them throughout the mass. I thought that was cool. He was being considerate of his friends and waved to them in the middle of mass to say “hi.” I like being around people with special needs. They are loving and caring. Mentally, they are little kids in a grown-up’s body. That’s what the world needs: grown-ups acting like little kids. But the special needs are not acting like little kids, it’s who they are. Being a special needs educator is what I want to do with my life. Special needs kids are the kind of people I want to be with every day and help. They should be able to feel joy from learning, and want to go to school every day to learn. Teaching them is a dream of mine. I hope that the UW school system would also think so and accept me. I can carry on the tradition of education to people who are over looked in society, but are the most important, because they are the most real.