The Roller Coaster that was my Journey to Teaching

This is a condensed explanation of my journey from almost dropping out of high school to being a few months away from earning my Bachelors degree.
Also, have a chill RHCP song.

Hello all, my name is Chandler M. and I’ve been in school for the last 20 years of my life. Having earned an associates and now on my final year of work towards my bachelors degree in education, with hopes to join the PACE program immediately after graduation, I have honed my life in most ways towards the benefit of my school work through years of struggle and determination. Though I have learned to succeed at UP, it wasn’t until years of mistakes under my belt before I began to take my schooling seriously.
At first, I didn’t much care for school and truly sat through it as that was what was expected of me. My IEP kept me barely above water, and I severely struggled with turning in my work, and don’t even get me started on the amount of work I would do, and then never turn in. This became a downward spiral for me when I was in middle school and continued throughout high school until the very end of my sophomore year. At this point, I felt that “I would just go to a state school with my friends, right?” Needless to say, my GPA at the time wouldn’t have allowed for this. This was the year that I was told that I wouldn’t be allowed to go to any college or university because of my grades unless I stepped back and took a serious change towards my education by my school counselor.
This was world-shattering to my high school self. I knew that I wasn’t giving my all towards school, but no one had vocalized the amount of damage I was doing to my future prospects until this point. That’s when I decided that I would give school my absolute highest effort if not for my instant benefit, the benefit of my future.
I began to push myself academically and give my 110% towards school in all aspects. I would arrive early, I would leave late from asking questions, and if I wasn’t clear on something I would stay upwards of 2 hours after school ended asking different teachers for guidance if they would have me. My grades began to reflect these changes in behavior, and my name started showing up in the quarterly honor roll list in the hall, then I aced my language class and was allowed the opportunity to go to Japan with a few of my classmates including two of my closest friends today.

Trying to find an interesting video on where I had my week-long homestay, I ran into this one which shows several of the locations and people I met myself on my trip there in high school.

The experience of traveling to another country for the first time was life-changing to say the least. I met amazing people, ate great food, and made a lot of memories. But one of the most important things that happened on that trip was meeting a member of the JET program, which is for education majors from other countries to come to Japan to teach for a stretch of time in a professional setting. At the time I was entirely mesmerized by this concept. Going to another country and living there? Teaching others English? It seemed so interesting to me, I was awestruck by its mere existence, and I wanted desperately to join it. This was my initial push towards bringing my grades up, and this allowed me to bring my GPA up high enough to seriously consider college.

At first I thought about going to OSU with my classmates, but I was unsure in myself if I could truly keep up my forward momentum academically. After all, it was only my second year of being able to pass all of my classes instead of only
2-3/6. With this in mind I looked towards community college and settled on attending at Portland Community College, the “Largest Community College in Oregon”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9I8tPqIgWA

Community college was a whole other beast compared to high school, and I knew this heading in. At the beginning of my attendance here I wasn’t used to acting on my own, and time management wasn’t something that I had a complete grasp on thus far. However, over my 3 year attendance here, I learned a lot about several concepts and topics that I had interest in, and met many wonderful and extremely supportive professors, including the professor of my only education courses, who I had for 3 terms in a row. I learned a lot about education here, and a few life lessons as well.
One such life lesson is knowing how to manage my time. When I came in, I was working full time, and going to school full time. I would stay up until 4 am most days and manage to wake up just in time for my 10am classes. I was truly burning the candle at both ends, to nobody’s benefit. I was coming in late to class, I was calling out of work because I couldn’t stay awake long enough to drive.

It was at this point that I was forced to work less with my introduction to having to travel to 2 campuses for class on the same day, with a 30 minute drive on a good day in between. The Rock Creek and Sylvania campuses are both beautiful and yet completely different from one another in the needs they require to attend.

Sylvania is the main campus and has an extensive amount of parking, and everything is very close together, a wonderful use of space, although be it slightly confusing to get around. Rock creek however, which was over 35 minutes from Sylvania, thus bringing my commute every day up to over an hour from home, is very spaced out, and has large stretches of lawn between the different buildings that classes are held. This was not something that I was used to, and had to change how I thought about time in order to arrive to places on time, and prepared for class to start before the class started.

This commute, and struggle with timing forced my hand. I had to cut something out, but what? How was I going to be able to afford driving to school, taking my courses, completing assignments, and work all in the same day? The answer? I didn’t.
At this point, I stopped driving to both campuses, I began to use the shuttle system that ran like clockwork between Sylvania and Rock Creek, I learned the absolute limit as to how long I could spend my time studying and reading and still be able to just make it to the bus stop in time. I learned when the the gates to the campus opened so I could spend more time before class completing assignments and finishing assigned readings, and I learned when the last bus ran back to Sylvania to spend the most of my time completing my course work. I became methodical, working like a machine to keep myself afloat.

At this point, I had only one goal in mind, get my degree, and move on. I couldn’t think of anything else more important to me than simply pursuing education even further. I had some set backs, I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it at some points, or that I might break. But I continued onward with the hope of someday becoming a teacher. Throughout this time, I managed to spend at least some amount of time out of every school year helping out in one of the local schools to my area. Sometimes I would simply observe, sometimes I would interview them for an assignment, and sometimes I simply helped print out papers and cut out materials. But through these experiences I learned lessons in classroom management, resource management, had ideas for future lessons, and figured out the grade range I would feel most comfortable teaching.

On my 4th year out of high school I began to go to UP. This was a big deal for my family, as the last 3 generations on either side never went through college. Since then, I have continued to give everything I have in school. I start assignments the day I receive them when possible, and ask (sometimes too many) questions. Though sometimes it seems like everything is getting a little shaky, I have a wonderful group of friends and family who are there to support me. As well as excellent colleagues who push me to achieve greater goals.

With that being said, I’m nearing the end of my 20 year educational journey, and am excited to see what the future has in store for me. I have come a long way, and owe it all to a lot of different people. I hope to graduate this spring, and I know if I keep track of my time, keep a level head, and finish my assignments early, I will be well on my way to turn my educational career, into a teaching career.