What a Passion for Education Meant and Means Now to Me by McKenzie

What a Passion for Education Meant and Means Now to Me by McKenzie - July 2019 Scholarship Essay

I did not start teaching Sunday School at Saint Luke’s Family Parish because I was passionate about education. I was not a teenager that had aspired on becoming a teacher one day as I execrated education. To my inexperienced self, education was information that was force-fed and harsh. There was simply no fun in it. But, while all of this was important, I was most certainly not the teenager that wanted to give up a part of her precious weekends to work with grimy little kids. Rather, I was the teenager that desperately needed volunteer hours within her church community in order to receive Confirmation.

For weeks I dreaded walking into that classroom and trying to stuff material in each kid’s already consumed brain. At first, they never really connected with me and I never really affixed myself with them. It was mutual - neither of us wanted to be spending our Sunday’s in a frowzy little room learning. However, after several weeks with the kids, we started to understand each other. I was coming to see that they were a goofy bunch that loved to interact with one another and they were realizing that I was a reserved individual that was timid to let loose. Slowly but surely, we all formed a friendship that made our sessions much more lively.

A once dim and lifeless classroom became one of laughter and light as we all blossomed. Each kid was more than a name on an attendance sheet to me now. They were these little people with the most unforgettable personalities. For example, there was Kate and her twin, Lauren, lean, athletic girls with spunk. And Owen, one of the most intelligent and well-spoken fourth graders I’ve ever met. Oh, and I can’t forget Raphaela! Her attitude and confidence filled up the room, which made us all smile.

Now that we had opened up and become our own little family, I began to see the value of education. In my class' short time together, we had been able to erase our apprehensions. Not only was I able to help the kids reach an understanding of how they can make the change they wished to see in the world, but they were able to give me an idea of who I wanted to be. After months of absolutely despising teaching, abhorring having to make lesson plans, and detesting expectations from advisors, these kids had shown me that I was meant to be an educator. I, a loathing teenager that had dreaded any form of education, had somehow found it as my passion. Education was my passion.

What I have come to realize though through my experiences is that regardless of whether it is Sunday School or a Doctoral program in college, education is not solely about teaching hardcore facts. It’s not about giving worksheets of the A, B, C’s or arduous algebraic equations that take hours to solve. It's about establishing a relationship with other people and showing them how they can take the world in front of them and make it the place that they wish to see. To me and my more matured self, having a passion for education means that an individual will do anything to help their students achieve and succeed at their full potential.