Introduction

My name is Gracie Sinclair and I am studying to be an early childhood educator at Louisiana Tech University. I grew up in a small town and I was always helping other students out and wanted to help out in the classroom from a young age. In the third grade, my teachers started partnering me with the students who had trouble so that I could help them in class. In junior high, I started getting paid to tutor. I loved seeing whoever I tutored in the hall the next day and them telling me they actually understood what was going on in class. It warmed my heart! My cheer coach asked me to teach penmanship in small groups during a semester of my junior year. I was hesitant because it was the early grades and I wanted to teach high school history and coach softball. After one semester, I started to think that early childhood was not so bad. That summer, my principal reached out to me to ask if I wanted to teach summer school. I thought I would be running errand, but I ended up actually teaching and mainly taught phonics and reading. I left the first day knowing I was supposed to be an early childhood educator. Even though I was drained, overwhelmed, and exhausted, I knew there was nothing else I wanted to do.