What is Delayed is not Denied

One of the biggest highlights of my college experience was traveling to Minneapolis, Minnesota for the NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Four Tournament where the Gamecocks became National Champions. Throughout my time at the University of South Carolina (USC), I have become the biggest women’s basketball fan and more specifically, Dawn Staley’s biggest fan. Supporting her and the Gamecocks would be the only reason I would spend way too much money for a weekend in the freezing cold snow. As my fandom was growing for Dawn Staley, I came across a Netflix Documentary titled The Playbook: A Coach’s Rule Book to Life which highlights famous athletic coaches and how their rules on the court translate to life off the court. Dawn Staley is featured in this documentary series and her fifth rule is “What is Delayed is not Denied.” This phrase has become the mantra of her program here at USC and scripted the team’s 2022 season. In the year 2020, there was a lot of hype around our women’s basketball team. National sports media, sportscasters, and of course the FAMS here at USC believed that the Gamecocks would be the number one overall seed in the tournament. Because of the pandemic, their 2020 season was abruptly cut short, and personally, Gamecock Nation feels like they were robbed of a National Championship. Similarly, in the year of 2020, the year I was supposed to step foot inside of a classroom as a teacher for the first time, the pandemic robbed me of that experience.

Like detailed in Tour de Carolina, one of the biggest reasons I chose to attend the University of South Carolina was because the College of Education promised me inside the classroom experience starting in the spring of my freshman year, earlier than any other school. During that spring, I was enrolled in Issues and Trends in Teaching and Learning (EDTE 201) which had built in internship hours. Due to COVID-19, I was never able to see the inside of the classroom until the spring of my junior year, two years later! Ironically, EDTE 201 focused on issues and trends in educational systems and one of the biggest conversations was around the topic of teacher retention. During the pandemic, teacher retention reached an all-time low. Each class member was challenged to create a TED talk presentation proposing a solution to teacher retention. After doing my own research, I decided the solution was increasing experience. The more experience teachers have inside of a classroom before they are hired for a full-time job, the more likely they are to not get discouraged when everything is not perfect and stay teaching. When you shape the minds of young teachers that they are serving their community, it helps when the hard days come. Teachers are able to see the impact they can have on students. How ironic to be studying about how increasing classroom experience directly increases teacher retention while also being denied classroom experience. At the end of this course, I virtually presented my TED talk, and you can clearly hear my passion about increasing hands-on learning experiences in teacher preparation programs. The entire TED talk is attached below. This speech was the first time I was doing heavy research on what education preparation programs can do to increase teacher retention. The words I used really spoke to the way I felt like teaching was a calling to serve and I would not let all the negativity surrounding the profession stop me from pursuing my degree. As a first-year college student, I really had no idea what my degree program would look like, but this course taught me about what quality degree programs should look like to adequately prepare teachers for the classroom. Teacher preparation programs must give pre-service teachers more time in the classroom before they get a degree to best equip them to stay in the education field once they graduate. Throughout this course, I intentionally studied how to keep teachers in the classroom longer and was disappointed as I moved into my sophomore and even junior year when I still was not having that hands-on experience. Each semester’s experience kept getting delayed.

Then came the spring semester of my junior year where my professor connected us with a community service opportunity inside of a classroom to help gain experience and build classroom confidence. I was connected with the Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) program at Fulmer Middle School here in Columbia. AVID is a program that specifically targets students who would be first generation college students and helps to foster intrinsic motivation so that these students can succeed at high levels of academic excellence. With this being my first experience working with students, I was finally able to put into practice almost two years of educational theories and practices. I finally was able to observe another teacher and see first-hand what type of teacher I wanted to be. After that first semester of working with students, I wrote a reflection in my journal and the entire entry is attached below. It is really inspiring to look back now and see how much my first inside the classroom experience impacted the teacher I have become over the last year. In my reflection I talked about how the relationships I formed with the students, “reinforced my passion to teach and impact every student in my future classroom.” Without having experience inside the classroom to serve students, I would not be the teacher I am today. Luckily with this beyond the classroom experience, everything I learned within the classroom was reaffirmed. In class, we talked about the importance of building comfortability with students and getting to do that with real students was crucial for my learning. Building connections is something you can read about in a textbook but takes real-world experience to really perfect. With that experience, I practiced how to understand my students well enough to serve them. Solely by getting to be in a middle school environment and learning how to serve the needs of those students exponentially will make me a better teacher.

Although my classroom experience was delayed, it was never denied. I still got to serve and love the students in my class and grow as a future teacher. I learned so much about teaching during that time and continue to learn more every day in my current student teaching role. For me, getting to serve students as a teacher is the ultimate championship. Just as my delayed experience was not denied, neither was USC’s women’s basketball’s National Championship. All in the same year, 2022, I got my championship by finally getting inside of a classroom and the Gamecocks got to bring home the trophy!