When explaining why teaching is important to me, I first need to give two backstories that have led me to want to be an educator. The first backstory was back when I was in the first grade. During my time in this class, I unfortunately was suffering from hearing problems. After this problem had started, I had to constantly go up to my teacher and ask her for help or ask her to explain the instructions again. However, she unfortunately didn't help me and would get mad at me for not paying attention. Due to this, my grades started slipping, and I was struggling to read and write. My parents became concerned and would constantly have meetings with my teacher to figure out what was happening. However, these meetings didn't help because my teacher would tell my parents that I had attention deficit disorder (ADD) and that I needed to get tested. As I stated above, this wasn't the issue, and the problems continued. After some time, my parents came to the realization of what was actually going on and provided me with the help I needed; now I have good hearing again. Unfortunately, due to my hearing problems and the lack of support I was provided, I struggled to read and sometimes still struggle to this day. When this happened, I felt like I wasn't smart enough and that I was never going to learn how to read or write. Since then, I've realized that I wanted to become a teacher because I never want my students to go through the same thing I went through. I want to be a support system for my students. I want my students to feel comfortable to ask me questions, and I want to spend extra time helping those who are struggling. In addition, I had a second-grade teacher who I consider to be the epitome of a great teacher. She was the type to adapt her teaching to help those who needed different ways of learning. She was the type to encourage her students and be patient with them. She was always nice but tough when she needed to be. When I was her student, I always believed in myself, and that was because she never gave up on me. She taught me what a real educator is supposed to be like, and I want to provide the same quality of teaching to my future students. Therefore, teaching is important to me because I want to see my students grow. I want them to believe in themselves, and I want them to know that even if they are struggling, I will always be right by their side to help them.

         As I stated above, I want to be able to help my students in any way that I can, and in order to do that, I need to understand that everyone has a different way of learning. There will be students who are auditory learners, visual learners, kinesthetic learners, social learners, etc. With this in mind, I will be able to create lesson plans that are tailored to each individual. For example, for students who are auditory learners, I can incorporate debates, read-alouds, videos, and many more. Secondly, for students who are visual learners, I can include visual aids like posters, word walls, anchor charts, graphs, presentations, and writing information on a whiteboard. In addition, for kinesthetic learners, I will be able to include manipulatives that will help students in math, role-plays, games, and crafts. Lastly, when it comes to students who are social learners, I found that adding cooperative learning, think-pair-share, whole and small group discussions, reading circles, debates, and group projects can be helpful to students because they are able to communicate with others and learn new things from their peers.

         When it comes to assessing students' understanding, I feel like it will be best to incorporate different types of assessments. I would like to use different types of assessments because I wasn't really good at taking tests due to getting nervous and forgetting everything I had studied. This made it difficult because many teachers would use the traditional paper and pencil exams. Therefore, when I am teaching my own class, I would like to utilize other assessments to gain a better understanding of what my students know and where I need to go back and reteach the concept. Some types of assessments I would like to incorporate into my class would be informal assessments, such as observations, portfolios, and presentations. I would observe my students as a form of assessment because it is less stressful on the students, and it will help me understand who needs some clarifications. Moreover, I will have individual portfolios for each of my students so I can collect all their work and have it organized in their folders; that way, the students, their parents, and I will be able to see their progress.

         I believe that I will always try to improve my teaching no matter at what stage of my career I am in. I will use my students' input to help me improve my teaching by taking into consideration what strategies are working and what aren't. By doing this, I will be able to adapt my instruction by integrating different methods that make learning fun and that will accommodate all of my students' needs. I also acknowledge that it is crucial for me to learn new skills to further my ability to teach my students. Therefore, I will learn new skills by attending all workshops and doing online research so that I can implement all I have learned in my classroom to further my students' learning. I will also communicate and work with other educators to create a support system and learn new ideas that will help me be a better educator to all my students. I will know if I was effective in my teaching when I see that my students have understood what I have taught them and when I see that they are progressing. Lastly, I will use technology to transform teaching and learning by utilizing fun websites that will be a great addition to what is being taught.