A Future Teacher's Mission of Bliss by Kazi

A Future Teacher's Mission of Bliss by Kazi - July 2020 Scholarship Essay

As a future high school history teacher, my biggest goal is to have a classroom that looks physically and spiritually like no other: one that appears and serves as a safe space to promote variety and uniqueness among my students. Only through this notion of accepting diversity will they be able to excel as both students and people in the real world.

Devoted to working in areas where low-income/poverty-ridden New Yorkers reside, I will merge the content of my lessons with my values of acceptance and kindness to empower the future leaders of our world. As poverty-shaming and racism are still rampant among present society, I will embed morals of peace and respect toward all people so that these things get put to a halt. I vow to not leave out the most gruesome details of slavery nor the dangerous standards of living in Hoovervilles. Not only will the knowledge be implemented into the minds of my students, but a precedent will be set so that we do not go back into tolerating discrimination for economic dilemmas and skin tone. Through multiple posters spread around the classroom to promote inclusion, my students will successfully grasp the idea that toxic history must never repeat itself.

Not only this, but I want to make sure my lessons reflect the severe intolerance LGBTQ+ people had to face (and still do face) in both the United States and the world. During my own time in high school, the micro/macroaggressions I faced led to a lot of pent up rage due to the injustice other students and I had to succumb to. I’ve successfully transferred this rage into creation in that I’ve created a goal to myself to make sure future students have the support I wish I had during my ventures. I took the baby steps of said goal by creating my high school’s first LGBTQ+ History club, filling the minds of my innovative peers with rich historical lessons and discussions. I wish to continue this both in college and in my future classroom, bright with colors of the rainbow to promote gender and sexuality inclusion.

I want to make sure the next generation of thinkers do not have such discrepancies against one another, but instead create harmony and a bubble of tolerance that shields them from the evils that creep to dismantle their ideologies. Intense studies and hung-up student-made crafts to respect the legacy of heroes like Marsha P. Johnson will hopefully bring about love among my students, which will be spread in college and their future endeavors.

I’d also like to use this teaching opportunity as one to protect and validate my own future students through any discrimination they face. Being both a person of color and gay man, I understand the unique challenges people like me face, which will be reflected in the support I will give my students. Never again shall a student have to lose balance from a community that pushes them over.

Through the hard work I will put myself into becoming the best history teacher I can be, I vow to host outside fundraisers to help make once gloomy, lackluster classrooms blossom into bright ones with entertained and eager students inside of them. By using student-made crafts, posters, and paint on classroom walls, a harmonic community of scholars will be born. By promoting such a community, students will be able to lift each other up to excel both in and out of the classroom.

I feel that the opposite of love is fear, but that fear still runs rampant in society. Whether it be the fear of growing to accept minority rights or the fear of change in general, I want fear diminished entirely. Similarly, I think of all my wilted future students, tied in fear from change occuring in society. I also think of myself watering the flowers that encompass the souls of said students with hope large enough to break the barriers that fear entangles them in. I want my students to create a community of harmony where they aren’t fearful of anything.

I hope that the history material I engulf myself in during college will spark hope among the students who currently cannot see the light of day due to governmental and societal faults to provide them equal access. I hope that I can use the education I am so thankful for to push them to make great differences in the world as they venture away from high school into their independent paths in college. I hope that my students are proud of their successes (and the success that will come). My lessons will live with them forever, hopefully causing a new wave of lawyers and politicians that bring the change they (and I) wish to seek.

That in its own entails a beautiful classroom with students that will prosper in success.