"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all" -Aristotle
Aloha! My name is Chelsey Wager-Smith. I am originally from Northern California. I lived on the island of Oahu, Hawaii from December of 2014- September 2017. I moved there to pursue my passion of becoming a teacher and making a difference in the lives of my students. I completed the graduate program at Chaminade University of Honolulu with my Teaching Licensure and Masters Degree in Secondary Teaching.
I overcame a lot to get to this point. Earning my Masters degree is an enormous accomplishment and something I never thought I would be able to do. I was the first in my family to earn her Bachelor's degree. Completing my bachelor's program was a possibility because of my participation in competitive soccer. This is the sole reason I considered college and found guidance along the way. My goal when I was young was to play soccer in college. I was scouted from all over the mainland and found my place at California State University, Chico. This was the beginning of such a challenging experience that I will never forget. Playing college soccer, along with being away from home for the first time and experiencing the pressures of college life and college sports provided me with life lessons I will never forget and helped shape my goals and passions today.
With this experience, I was able to find myself moving all over the San Francisco Bay Area to find a soccer team that suited me and provided the best environment for me to grow as an athlete, student, and person. My second opportunity to play college soccer was at Menlo College. In the middle of the Silicon Valley, a very affluent community I began a new team, new school, and new experiences. As I began exploring this new community I found that just over the freeway lay the impoverished, East Palo Alto. The grand differences between these two communities stunned me as well as the statistics on education, poverty, and crime. I found this unsettling that just across the freeway there were schools and children who did not have the same opportunities as the other. This was a new experience. Originally, coming to this school to develop myself as an athlete and student, I found myself changing as a person and developing a new passion for working with the children who are not allotted the same privileges that I was given growing up.
My final challenge as a student athlete came after my knee surgery. I decided to stop playing college soccer and focus on my degree. I ended up at California State University, East Bay and finished my degree there majoring in Human Development. This is when I decided I wanted to be a teacher. I knew I had a passion for helping underprivileged kids and making an impact on their ability to access education, and other opportunities that they might not have. I spent time volunteering at Coaching Corps and the Boys and Girls Club while attending East Bay. This was a great opportunity to use what I learned as an athlete and my passion for kids! I later worked at the YMCA of San Francisco after graduation and saved money to move to Hawaii to earn my master's degree.
While on Oahu, I began working at Catholic Charities Hawaii. I was an outreach worker, for almost a year, where I helped parents reunify with their children who had been removed from their home by Child Welfare Services. During this time, I felt the utmost frustration with the lack of access for the outreach workers to help the kids in these families! For each case I received I wanted to do more and more to help them, to guide them, to give them opportunities to be successful.
This led me to my student teaching at Ewa Makai Middle School where I was able to apply every experience from along the way to my practicum. The school year began with a close look at the students who struggle, who need support, who excel, information on the different tools the teachers in this school use to meet the needs of the kids and to teach the whole child and to help them be successful in school as well as in their personal lives. Being this involved in helping kids made me certain in my decision to be a teacher. I knew right away that I was in the right place. I would finally have the opportunity to make an impact in my students' lives.
I have made every effort to learn from the opportunities along my journey. From being privileged enough to play competitive soccer, to attending college, and being able to apply these lessons briefly as a student teacher. I anxiously await the next opportunity to have my very own classroom and develop my pedagogy. I am looking forward to the next part of my journey!
Update: Upon graduating with my Masters degree, I was offered a teaching position at James Campbell High School in Ewa Beach, Hawaii. I completed a semester there before moving back to the mainland. I accepted a position in Davis, California as an 8th grade English teacher in January 2018 and will continue to teach here for the 2018-2019 school year.