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Autobiography Essay David G. Estes Professor Carol Billing EDUC 201 Foundations of Education Fall 2013

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My childhood education has been well diversified and well-traveled. I was a Military Brat. My Dad was in the United States Air Force. That meant my family would move often and I would have numerous schools to adapt to throughout my education. I had 3 elementary schools, 2 middles schools, and 2 high schools. I do not remember the names of 2 of the elementary schools, but I do have vague memories. They were in Las Vegas, Nevada. I remember one of the teachers. She was nice and really cared about the students. The third elementary school was in Berlin, Germany. It was named Thomas Arnett Roberts School (T.A.R.). I have vivid memories of this school. I meet some of the best teachers there, and one horrible teacher. I went to 2 different middle schools in Del Rio, Texas. I then went to 1 high school in Del Rio, Texas and 1 Lompoc, California. My current level of education is sophomore in college. Including this semester, I have 10 classes until I earn my Associates Degree in General Education. I will then transfer to a 4 year school to finish my teaching degree. I am planning on going to Boise State University.

Throughout my education I have had a wide range of positive and negative experience from each place I lived. I believe that the positive and negative experience that I went through helped me learn great insight into my own education. It also helped shape me into what kind of teacher and mentor I want to become. I want to become a teacher who inspires developing children to learn and create. To teach them that perfection is not about winning or losing, rather it is about trying your best, with all your heart and mind, no matter the outcome. The positive teachers I had taught me to strive to learn. They had many tools up their sleeves to make my lessons exciting and creative. They had patience caused they cared and I was important. I did have one negative teacher that helped me learn what kind of teacher I do not want to become. She was a teacher who gave up on me. She was one of my elementary teachers. She didnt know

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how to deal with my Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, (ADHD). She would send me to the disabled kids classroom so she didnt have to deal with me in her classroom for a couple of hours. This was brought to the principals attention by other teachers who cared and she was reprimanded. My grades were excellent in her class. Her defense was, she didnt know how to deal with me and she couldnt teach me because I have ADHD. She taught me to never give up on anyone, no matter how different they are. Teachers are valuable in helping students learn essential tools to survive and succeed in society.

I am 37 years old. My work experience started when I was 18 years old. It began with the military. The United States Air Force, to be exact. The military taught me valuable tangible and intangible skillsets to be successful in life and as an educator.

Early on in my military career, I learned to be a team player. A team player is essential to be productive in a group environment. The ability to put your personal pride, wants, and selfinterests aside for the greater goals of the group is important. It is important to realize that a tribe/group that has too many chiefs/leaders and not enough Indians/workers will achieve very little. I believed this helped me with the school environment. There is a chain of command that that can only function with team players. If it doesnt have team players, the school would not be able to operate properly, and students would not to receive the quality education.

The military also taught me how to handle great responsibilities. The important thing about responsibility is how you handle it. Does a person let it go to their heads? Do they crack under pressure or have the ability to organize, prioritize, and manage the responsibility. My work experience, from day one, has trained and entrusted me with responsibility to function for myself and the group. As I progressed through my career that responsibility grew.

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The military taught me how to train fellow coworkers. It was our job to understand how someone learned and get them trained to a quality level. When our skillsets were not needed by the government to defend our country, we trained and taught, so we can be ready on a moments notice. Teaching and training was majority of my work that I did in the military.

I was a supervisor in the military as well. Military supervisor is unlike any civilian supervisory job, except being a parent. It is literary a 24 hour job. When you are assigned troops, you are responsible for everything that happens to them. If it something happens on duty, you must answer for it. When something happens off duty, you must answer for it. You are hoping that whatever happens is positive and it doesnt happen off duty. I have had my fair share of calls in the middle of night to tend to supervisory responsibility. It is a great responsibility that has taught me a lot and helped me grow.

The military is made up of a very diverse work environment of many cultures. When new troops come with different education levels and personality, we must tap into their learning style and find their strengths and weakness and get them trained. The ability to understand different people and teach them is a skillset the military has taught me. Responsibility and being a team player is traits that I learned from my service. These skillsets has helped prepare me to be a teacher. I will always have a lot to learn but my foundation is solid in my professional and personal life.

Extracurricular activities are a useful building block to help build hands-on experience to developing educator skills. In the military we were required to do community volunteer services. These services and activities helped build community relations and develop responsibility. I have coached sports for adults and children, volunteered in Special Olympics, participated in Adopt A

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Highway and school activities, and intern for Treasure Valley IStem conference. All these activities helped build character, responsibility, and management skills in me.

Teamwork was essential to make all these activities successful. You have to be able to accept responsibility and work as team. Schools work the same way. Every faculty member has a role and responsibility to fulfill in order for the school to operate properly.

These extracurricular activities involve teaching certain skills and traits. I had to learn that there are many different types of teaching styles and learning styles, and each person learns differently. I had to learn as many of the teaching and learning styles so that I could be most effective for the people I am trying to teach.

These activities also helped learn how to deal with diversity of age and culture. Each age and culture has different mentality that I had to understand, so I could be able to have an effective relationship which I could be successful doing the extracurricular activity. One has to have respect and understanding of a person to be able to make a connection.

These activities also taught me how to bring together people with different backgrounds and personalities. They all have a unique strengths and weakness. This can be challenging but a great building block. To get people with different strengths and weakness to work together as a team is a great lesson to learn.

The unique thing that all these activities taught me is the intangible traits. Intangible traits of self-worth, confidence, satisfaction, service before self, and unselfishness. These traits cant be taught in classrooms. They can only be learned through experiencing them. These are some

Running head: AUTOBIOGRAPHY ESSAY of the traits educators have. They put the students first to help them grow in every way as possible.

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The factors that helped me decide that I wanted to teach were I always had a desire to help people. I joined the United States Air Force because it is what helping people is all about; helping other peoples needs before your needs. I thought the military would be my final career, but as I rose through my military career I learned that I had a greater calling for teaching. The military has a vital foundation built on training. The military is constantly training in all its aspects, because peoples lifes depends on your training, and you are only strong as your weakest link. This foundation requires a deal of teaching younger troops on a daily basis. The training brought out in me a trait that I loved.teaching. Teaching is like art. You have a blank canvas and with the right tools and methods, you can help produce a beautiful piece of artwork that makes the world brighter. This teaching is better than artwork in the fact it can go on in life and continue to build off what you created and create work on its own to make the world even brighter.

I always struggled with learning in certain areas with my ADHD. Teaching these areas that I struggled at has also helped me conquer my weak areas, and gives me insight to people who also struggled with learning those certain areas. These reasons made me want to teach in education. I feel that I have a useful insight with learning disorders that can help all students learned. I have learned many different methods of ways to learn subject matter because of my learning disorder. I feel this gives me an extra tool in teaching. Teaching requires educators to be able to be diversified in their teaching method to be able to reach all students.

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The rewards that I feel I will receive from teaching is intangible rewards thats comes from the challenges and hard work from teaching. The intangible rewards of helping people and the community, is a great reward that last beyond a lifetime, from generation to generation. Tangible rewards always last a certain amount of time and benefit certain people, while teaching is an endless reward that benefits all.

My short term goals are to finish this finish the last few semesters I have with College of Western Idaho (CWI) to received my Associates degree in Education. I want to continue to receive all the valuable experience from my observation. I also plan to continue volunteering for any educational functions and events to help me receive as much needed experience. I feel that being involved, as much as possible; in any educational environment helps develop my learning process in a positive direction. There are so many life and educational lessons to learn that the more a developing student embraces the environment the more the will be able to absorb the information.

My other short term goal is to complete my transfer to Boise State University (BSU) in 2014. BSU has a great location for my family and me. It also has a great reputation for its entire school and programs. The most important thing it has for me is its education program is successful and has great ratings. After this semester I will have two semesters left. I need to meet with education counselor to ensure that I have all my items in order and that I am on track to make my transfer as smooth as possible. These short terms helps me get achieve my long term goals.

My long term goals are to become an elementary teacher that graduated from BSU. I plan on achieving this through hard work, persistence, and patiences. There will be a lot of

Running head: AUTOBIOGRAPHY ESSAY studying and learning that will take up my time as it does now. I will have to put in the

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persistence to keep moving forward with studying and learning. As with all things in life, there are unforeseen things that happen and detours will come up. How I handle these challenges of detour will determine if I complete my requirements on time. I must be patient when dealing with challenges and I will overcome all obstacles.

This is my plan to meet my short and long term goals. Both of these goals have an important factor to each of them, my family. They are amazing and supportive in every possible way imaginable. We are a team and in my life the mean the world. I have a positive learning environment at home because of them, which make it possible to focus on studying and learning. My family is also my short and long term goal. I want to be able to teach them everything I know and more. I want them give them every chance in the world to have the opportunity to embrace all aspects of life. By succeeding in my education, I am succeeding in improving their lives as well. As I achieve my, it sets a great example for them and provides more insight into their education. As I grow old I want to achieve one thing for my family. I never was the Husband or Dad who let his family down. All my goals and my life, I want to be known as the person who always gave his full effort.