About Me

My Story

Hello! My name is Micah Wagner and I am currently working as a 7th grade mathematics teacher in central Pennsylvania at Mountain View Middle School. That being said, my story actually begins about 8,000 miles from Pennsylvania in Kijabe, Kenya. My parents moved to Kenya in 1997 to work at an international boarding school. I was born just a few years later and East Africa became my first home. Africa is a huge part of who I am and I will never take for granted some of the wild adventures and life-changing experiences that I had growing up there. 

Because of my experience growing up in Kenya as a U.S. citizen, I am considered a Third Culture Kid, or TCK. A TCK is a child that spent some part of their developmental years growing up in a country that is not their parent's passport, or home country. The result of this is a child that identifies with their parents' culture but also identifies with the culture(s) that they were a part of growing up. With multiple cultures playing a role in the identity development of a TCK, they create sort of their own culture which is considered the "third culture". 

There are many benefits to being a TCK such as being more culturally aware, open-minded, highly adaptive, and having better intercultural and interpersonal skills. That being said, there are also a lot of challenges such as not having a specific place that they call "home", or feeling like they do not truly belong anywhere. Although there are many hard things about being a TCK, I have embraced the challenge and see my experience as a huge asset in my career and classroom. My unique experience allows me to connect with students from around the globe and understand people's varying perspectives on a whole range of topics. 

In 2019, I graduated high school and returned to the U.S. to continue my education. I have always had a love for math and science and figured that engineering would be a good fit for me. However, I realized after two years of engineering classes that my strengths and experiences fit better with teaching rather than engineering. 

In David Pollock and Ruth Van Reken's book Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds, they discuss the value of having teachers that are ATCKs (Adult Third Culture Kids). "Because of their experience in a variety of different cultures and places around the world, ATCKs (Adult Third Culture Kids) often find themselves particularly qualified when it comes to jobs or situations such as teaching or mentoring. For those who choose teaching as a career, the fact that most TCKs have themselves attended schools with a wide variety of cultural learning and teaching styles helps them understand and be sensitive to their students' struggles with language spelling, and conceptual differences. They have every potential of being particularly effective in cross-cultural educational processes...ATCKs, of all people, should be willing to allow for some differences in writing styles as well as thinking and learning styles." 

Although I enjoyed a lot of my classes as an engineer, I felt that my past experiences and passion for young people made me more valuable in a classroom setting. I changed my major in the Spring of 2021 and haven't looked back since. I am absolutely in love with teaching and have a huge heart for not just teaching content, but helping students see the true value in their education and that the world is so much bigger than their own backyard. 

I have a passion for creating a culturally welcoming environment where all students are able to see the value in their background and come to the realization that understanding culture is not just a window to understanding the world better, but also a mirror through which they are able to learn more about themselves. 

I have learned and grown so much as a professional educator over the last few years. I am wholly dedicated to serving my students and growing in my knowledge of content and pedagogy so that I can inspire, support, and lead students in pursuing their passions and being fully equipped to follow their dreams.





Here are some pictures from my time in Kenya and other travel experiences around the world!