One of the goofiest and caring people you'll ever meet. I am a 26 year old aspiring high school biology teacher! I've always loved science and math, one of those kids, the subjective thinking about objective concepts has always been so fascinating to me. I'm born and raised in Virginia Beach and now live in Chesapeake with my fiancé, our twin boys, and our cane corso pups. Everyday is a new adventure, and right now we are in my last semester of my bachelor's - very excited! I cannot wait to get into teaching and get the opportunity to educate and learn from the very same people who will develop and improve our future. Although I do not have any teaching experience, I love to tutor middle and high school students. It's sort of a mission to me to learn something new everyday, I love to learn about how things work and then tell everyone I know all about it. Seeing as I've been doing this since I could talk, it seems that my mission in life is to teach.

Is that school, not just education, but your moments in school are the start to so many building blocks in life. School is an experience where you learn to build relationships, to act in a professional manner, to set career goals and gain planning skills, and much more. Getting to learn something and then applying it to your community is such a rewarding and educational moment. As a teacher, a student, a person... it is important to understand how everything we do can be connected or related in some way and we can use what we know to build on those connections and improve. As an aspiring teacher, I know that the curriculum is just as important as the classroom dynamic and management. Understanding that the role of "teacher" goes far beyond the lesson plan can help me and other aspiring teachers to learn skills that will help us understand who our kids are as a person, not just a student. Eventually, I know that we can help those students to become better students, and better people by helping them to learn how to change the world.

A teacher who the students can rely on, learn from, and be inspired by! I think that the purpose of school is not only for education, but to build a better self and a better future. Personally, the academic and personal aspects of school are most important. Learning the concept being taught is just as important as the interaction and collaboration that you have with your classmates. In schools, it is important to help students feel independent, but to properly prepare them for the real world , they have to learn skills for group interactions and team-based projects. In addition to collaboration, I think that teachers could use critical thinking and problem solving in their lesson plan. Allowing a student to stop and think about what problem they have ad how they can solve it, is another vital tool for adulthood. This ability to problem solve and to think out of the box could help be the difference between a student who follows their dreams and one who picks the closest and easiest path. Students should feel challenged and also rewarded.

When I think about the kind of teacher I would like to be, I think about the diversity in cultures and learning styles. I think about how I would use those differences to help the students get involved in their communities. Learning is always easier when you find a way to relate the topic you are learning to something you love or participate in frequently. To cultivate this type of environment I would like to be a teacher that is very student-centered and deals with a lot of collaborative group work and interactivity. My teaching style will follow educational philosophies such as progressivism and social reconstructivism. To be a progressive teacher it is crucial that I utilize critical thinking and teamwork into my lesson plans. Meanwhile, my views on the importance of community involvement help me to create my lesson plans around a social reconstructivism philosophy.

If I could use one word to describe the teacher that I hope to become, it would be inspiring. I want my kids to see a fun, goofy person who can teach them how to buckle down and to achieve their goals. I hope that every student will leave my class at the end of the year, either having learned something new or set a new goal to achieve. No matter what my students have a passion for, I hope that I can use my influence to help them get on the right path. I understand that science is not everyone's cup of tea, but if I got a student excited about a fun experiment or had a student reach out to me for advice on getting into a science related career, then I have done my job.

To visualize the type of teacher that I would like to be, I made a word cloud. I chose the words from a Dartmouth University article that suggests various accommodations that teachers can make to help students with different learning styles grasp the same concept. For example, if I am teaching students the various parts of a flower I could show a video, have students label a worksheet, provide live samples, and setup an activity where the students are to separate each part of the flower and set it up on a piece of paper with labels. These may seem cliché, but these tasks would accommodate to every learning type, and would have a higher chance of helping the students to learn.

Leave a comment or question below!

1. Hi Victoria! I really like how you put a focus on learning how to teach to different learning styles. I think it is so important that every child have access to information in the way they perceive it best. I really like how you used a word cloud based on this concept to portray your future goals. I thought that was really creative and eye-catching!

-Grey

2. We have something in common as my name is also Victoria. You did a great job with presentation of your page. I liked the quote you used above. I agree with you about wanting to learn effective classroom management as I also believe that is a critical component of teaching.

Victoria Beasley

3. Hello Victoria! Another fellow Victoria here! I really enjoyed your introduction video and thought you made great points! School is more than learning basic reading, writing, and math, it allows for students to develop mentally and emotionally through being in an environment with their peers. I also am hoping that a future student comes back to thank me as well, it definitely would make the career extremely fulfilling!

-Victoria Santana

4. I also love science and math, but mostly science!! Which is why I got my bachelors in Kinesiology because I find the human body absolutely fascinating! When you said that school is a "building block", I really felt that because I think going through high school and all the experiences was the initial molding for me as a person. Thanks for your awesome insight. -Samantha Reveche