What you learn about yourself on your journey as an educator

This semester, I found out more about what I want to do in the future of my educational career than any semester previous. While observing Mrs. O'Donnell at the Burncoat Middle School, I found myself getting bored just sitting and watching, so I started to get involved by helping some of the students- particularly, the Spanish-speaking students in one of the classes that ELL students were in. I found myself drawn to the task because I am a native Spanish speaker. It made me really excited that I was able to help in such a specific way, and I even encouraged a shy ELL student to share her answer aloud in the class. Hooray for small victories! This is when I began taking interest in teaching English as a second language, and continued to pursue helping with the students in any way that I could. I even began asking to observe the smaller ELL class, and found myself surprised at how much more outgoing the kids were in the smaller classroom compared to when they were placed in the class with the rest of the native English speaking students. It was amazing to see their personalities truly come out, and how excited they were too learn. As an English major, I always thought I would eventually be teaching a normal English class to middle schoolers, but to my surprise, my opinion has changed. Next semester I am taking an ELL teaching course, and I cannot wait to continue to help these students!