In the fall of 2023 I was honored to be nominated for 2024-2025 Michigan Teacher of the Year (MTOY). As part of the nomination process, each nominee submitted a collection of essays responding to various prompts related to their career, experiences, key educational issues, and Michigan schools overall. While the audience of each essay was the MTOY committee, it felt inauthentic to keep my ruminations private, languishing in a forgotten folder on my desktop. The opportunity to reflect on these questions and formulate my ideas was a wonderfully rewarding experience twelve years into my career, and one that I would like to share if for no other reason than to push myself to keep these ideas, and the process, at the forefront of my mind while I continue to engage in the deep work that is education.

Formatting note: Each essay was limited to no more than 2 pages, double spaced, size 12 font. My original drafts exceeded this by several multitudes, but I appreciated the exercise in concise expression.

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MTOY Essay #1:

What motivated you to become a teacher? What was the biggest obstacle you encountered in your journey to becoming a teacher, and how did you overcome that obstacle?

Early in my educational journey, I discovered my passion for working with and helping people. While nearing the end of my Political Science Pre-Law degree in college and contemplating law school, I decided to take an elective called “Reflections in Teaching.” This course opened my eyes to the science of learning and sparked a profound interest in the “aha” moment – the moment when understanding dawns and everything falls into place.

Studying learning and education allowed me to experience and embrace that “lightbulb” feeling firsthand. The more I delved into the field, the more fascinated I became with all the elements that contribute to the process of learning and comprehension. Each time I witnessed that “aha” moment, I realized it was the feeling I had always cherished, and I wanted to explore it further. I wanted to understand how to foster it in others and provide support along the way.

Discovering the intricacies of this epiphany shifted my vision and career path. I made the decision to change my major and pursue a degree and career in education. However, this sudden shift came with challenges. I was well into my junior year of college, and I found myself a year behind my peers who had been dedicated to the field of education from the start. This meant I had to navigate a change in my financial timeline and add over thirty additional credit hours to my educational journey.

To address these deficits I focused my energy on the element of the discipline that had drawn me to the field, which was the process of learning. I knew that extending my degree by thirty undergraduate credits, and the required year of unpaid internship was going to be a strain, so I identified how I could address this while also deepening my understanding. I used this as an opportunity to become a student employee within the College of Education at Michigan State University, serving in the role as a Technical Intern throughout my undergraduate studies. In this role I juggled the act of working and learning to ensure my financial possibilities aligned, but more importantly I took the opportunity to live in the discipline beyond the walls and hours of my teacher prep program. 

As a student employee I served the faculty of the College in their technological needs and was able to turn my relatively late transition into the field of teacher preparation into an opportunity to learn by doing. Assisting academics and practitioners in molding their craft allowed me to think deeply and reflect on the practice, and how I envisioned my own career as a facilitator of learning. Through this experience I truly lived the notion that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone. Without the constraints that guided me toward being a student employee, I am certain I would not have been as successful or prepared when I joined the field as a practitioner.