Knowing I Wanted to Teach by Ciara

Knowing I Wanted to Teach by Ciara - June 2017 Scholarship Essay

I remember when I was around six, I thought that the mail man was the nicest person in the world. The reason I thought that was because I didn’t know that it was his job and he got paid to deliver our mail— I just thought he was a super nice guy who volunteered to bring everyone’s mail to them. As you can see, I didn’t know very much about jobs and careers back then, and I don’t think I had something I wanted to be when I grew up.

In my church we have these things called callings, which are like different jobs people have in our local congregation so that our church meetings can happen. One of the callings is a primary teacher. The primary teachers each taught a class of the young children in the ward, from ages 3 to 12. When I was 6 my class got moved up to the next age group and we got the teacher that was known in the primary as the fun teacher. Everyone liked her because she read stories in classes and always brought fun things like decorative pencils and lots of crayons and markers. I remember thinking that when I grew up the calling I wanted to have was a primary teacher, because I would make sure that I was the “fun” teacher that everyone wanted to have.

Now that I’m older, I don’t want to be a primary teacher anymore— but I do have a career in mind, and it still has to do with teaching. I started taking dance lessons when I was eight, and now I’m going to college this fall to major in dance. My dream is to become a dance teacher. Over the last ten years of taking dance lessons I’ve had many teaching opportunities, including choreographing duets, being a teacher’s assistant, and even substituting classes. I’ve learned a lot over the years from watching different teachers and learning many different styles of dance. I realized that I have some talent for choreography when the clogging duet I created for my sister and her friend won second place at the National Championships competition. I also discovered that in addition to my love of dance I also have a love of teaching. I’ve really enjoyed substituting the few times I’ve gotten to. I really like helping teach younger kids dance and watching them improve and grow.

It’s interesting to me that even though I may not have known at age 6 what I wanted to be when I grew up, I did want to teach something. Even though I don’t really want to teach little kids in church anymore, I still do want to teach. When I was 6 I was inspired by my teacher and decided that if I was ever made a teacher I would be just like her and be the teacher that everyone wanted to have. I still want to be a fun teacher so that people will enjoy coming to class. I’ve had many different teachers and I’ve experienced that there needs to be a balance in class between being really serious and focused on learning, and also having fun. I want to help the kids learn and become better at dance, but still teach in a fun way so that they can all come to love dance just as much as I do.