Letter to Me

To my senior in high school self,

You are graduating from high school soon! This is your senior in college self and I am graduating soon too. You have so much to look forward to in the next 4 years. You will achieve your long-term goal of becoming an English teacher in just 4 short years.

I have been a pretty successful student in college. I managed my time as well as I could. I took every teaching experience opportunity that I could fit into my schedule. I got to know as many teachers and staff members that I could at every school that I worked at, so that I could have a strong network when it came time to look for teaching jobs.

I wish that I would have asked for more resources from all of the teachers that I have worked with. Instead I wrote ideas from lesson plans that I liked in random notebooks or I just relied on my memory to remember it for when I might use it (typical Kaila thought process). I would have benefitted from asking for more lesson plans because now I have to work with the bits and pieces that I have, work a lot of things from scratch, and ask the teachers at the school I will be working with for help; I guess getting to know the teachers right from the start is not a horrible thing, so maybe this mistake that I made will not turn out to be such a horrible thing.

The College of Education’s teacher program helped to prepare me for teaching on my own in many ways. This program gets its students into classrooms each semester in order for them to see different: grade levels, school settings, demographics, and teaching styles. I have gotten close to 3 different teachers in the 2 years that took for me to complete the program. Being in and out of different classrooms helped me to find out how I am going to manage my future classroom. The College of Education placed me with 3 wonderful teachers and I am thankful that I did not have any bad experiences with my cooperating teachers. My (our) cooperating teacher for student teaching year is an amazing teacher and an awesome person. I could not have asked for a better cooperating teacher. I have learned so much from her. She has made me feel more confident in my teaching abilities and I feel like I am more prepared for teaching than I was before my student teaching semester.

If I could change a few things about Wichita State’s College of Education program one of them would be getting students into field placements sooner and for a longer period of time in order to get them used to life as a teacher. The Cooperating Education program at WSU helped me out a lot when it came to getting used to being in the classroom and working with students all day, but I know that many of my classmates did not get the opportunity to be a part of this program. Another thing that I would change about the English Education program would be to have students take a mandatory grammar class because I am about to graduate and my grammar knowledge a bit fuzzy because I have not had to use it extensively for my whole college career and now I am expected to know it and teach it in a few months. A more in-depth special education class would have been helpful to have as well because many teachers have to teach at least one class within a class and they need to know how to work with students who have mild to moderate special needs. Other than those things, WSU’s education program is excellent.

Your college years will be a bit rough at times. Just a heads up, Alexander and you will not make it through the first year of college together, but you will meet someone amazing soon enough. Do not get caught up in the small stuff. Stay focused. These next four years will be some of the strangest and most awesome years of your life. Take every opportunity to try something new and interesting. Do not change who you are for anyone because you are awesome.

An eleven year goal of yours is just four short years away from being accomplished. Always keep this goal in mind. You got this.

Have an awesome summer,

Kaila, your senior in college self J