Brennan Davis

WHO AM I?

At present, I am 26 years old and living in Virginia Beach (I’m originally from Michigan) with my fiancé Erin, along with our big Yellow Lab Mack, and our two cats Boo and Biscuit! I am currently working on wrapping up my first semester ever as a teacher! I work full time as a long term substitute at a private academy for children who struggle with behavioral and mental health issues. I've had a passion for both working with children and helping people for as long as I can remember, and took every opportunity I could to do so. This passion for helping others (as well as just a genuine interest in the science of the brain) lead me to pursue a degree in psychology, which I earned in the spring of 2020 from Central Michigan University. After using this degree to work in children’s mental health for about two years, I decided it was time for a career change. 

I believe one of the most important influences on who I am today and why I want to go into teaching would have to be my family. I come from a family of educators, so I suppose you could say that teaching is in my DNA!  

My mom, Jennifer, worked as an English teacher and media specialist for about 15 years, and growing up I would spend a lot of time on days off or after school hours with her in her school library. I would often spend this time browsing the shelves for any and all books I found interesting or helping her organize and decorate the library. This time with her helped to foster my passion for reading, learning, and being creative. Later in her career my mom would become the principal of her school, a position that she held for about 12 years. This gave me greater access to explore more of her school. I would volunteer my free time or days off to assisting teachers in their classrooms, helping out with extracurricular activities and events like school plays, band classes and school carnivals. From a young age, I was really provided insight on how schools run behind the scenes and how many systems work into delivering a well rounded education.  

 My dad, Norm, was also in education and served as a 5th grade and middle school level teacher for over 30 years. I would spend a lot of time in his classrooms as well throughout the years, and learned what it really meant to be a teacher from an in classroom perspective. My dad was always so kind, compassionate and genuine while teaching and interacting with his students. Through him I learned that being a teacher cannot just be about delivering course information and materials. Rather to be a good teacher you need to genuinely care for your students, both as students and as people. He would encourage students to be weird and unique, and to explore their passions and creativity at every chance they could. My dad taught me to always be curious and to embrace what makes me weird and unique.  

With these influences growing up, and reflecting on them now, I feel that I may have always been prepping myself to become a teacher, even if I didn’t know it at the time! 

THE TEACHER I WILL BECOME 

In my opinion, the purpose of school is ultimately to create an environment that fosters not just learning, but things like creativity, critical thinking, and personal growth. In no way do I mean to diminish the importance of teaching (or for the students, learning) of course materials like math, reading, science, and history. Learning the information taught in classes is supremely important for students to find new skills, interests, and information that could be very useful to them down the line in college or their chosen career path. But I believe that the best thing a school can do for their students is to encourage them to pursue their interests and integrate those interests into their lessons. We as educators need to understand that there is almost always more than one perspective or approach to a problem, and we need to let our students explore those alternative routes in order to help them find what works best for them.  

I think in this way, I believe the educational philosophies that best apply to the type of teacher I hope to become are Existentialism and Social Reconstructivism. As a history teacher (and I would imagine math as well), I think it can sometimes be difficult to get away from the trappings of perennialism or essentialism, because so much of the learning of history is fact based that can't be rewritten. But I hope to become a teacher that can use the core concepts and drivers of these past events to help my students understand how that knowledge can be applied to the world around them. Even if history is their least favorite subject and they never want to touch it again (which is something I'm told by my students on a near daily basis), I hope my students can walk away from my class having learned skills and tools that can help them develop as human beings, with a better understanding of the world, cultures and inequities that surround them.  I would hope I can use history lessons about the social inequality of the past to inform their decision making and relationships moving forward.

I model a lot of how I wish to be as a teacher after the teacher that my father was. A teacher who was kind and patient with his students. A teacher who genuinely cared for every kid that walked into his room and gave every effort to get to know who they are not as a learner but as a person. A teacher who encouraged his kids to be weird, creative, and unique. A teacher who hoped to inject at least a little positivity into every day. Funnily enough, my first semester as a teacher also happened to be my dad’s last semester as one, as he retired this January. On the day of his retirement, he was visited and contacted by dozens of former students wanting to say goodbye to him and thank him for what he did as a teacher. One thing he told me about this that really stuck out to me was that not a single one of those students thanked him for teaching them about what a ‘gerund’ was or what the difference between the life cycles of high and low mass stars. What he was thanked for was for treating them compassionately,  encouraging them to be weird and unique, for allowing them to embrace their emotions (even the sucky ones), and for trying to find positivity in every situation. This is the kind of impact I hope to have on my students, and that is the teacher I hope to become.