Autobiographical Essay 1

Autobiographical Essay
Holly Heath
Professor Brad Hunt
EDUC 120 Foundation of Education
Fall 2017
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Introduction: there are some who are born to be teachers, those people are the special kind of

people in the world. They have the patience of a saint, and a heart of gold. They take care of

other people’s children as if they were their own. Teaching is not for the faint of heart, you have

to be ready to make boo boos all better, be able to take being sneezed and coughed on. Even

sometimes puked on. At the end of the day all those children walk out the door and all you can

think to yourself is I hope in my heart of hearts that I impacted at least one of those children

today.

Educational Background: I come from a very small town. In this town we have two

Elementary schools to attend, and it is all based off of which side of the county line we are on. I

was lucky enough to attend Butte View Elementary school. Which were grades 1st -3rd. After

grade three I moved on to the next school. There is also two different schools to go too for 4th -6th

I got to attend Carberry Elementary, where I was from 4th- 6th grade. Where I was lucky enough

to partake in the NASA specialist program, I even got entered into a national essay contest where

I placed 3rd in the nation for my essay about the evolution of breaking the sound barrier. After

that I moved on to junior high where I attended Emmett Junior High. Emmett Junior High was at

this time only grades 7-9. During my time at the Junior High I worked the score board for the

volleyball games, and was head mat maid/ manager for the wrestling team. After freshman year I

went on to the high school. Emmett High School, the famous Huskie Domes. While I attended

the high school I was a member of FFA, and local 4-h. I also put my time in for community

service at our local rec district where I was a volunteer coach for different sports. I also was on

the varsity golf team my senior year. The main reason I have chosen a career as a profession

educator is because of the many great educators the Emmett School district has to offer. Without

them I probably would still be twiddling my thumbs on what I was really meant to do in life.
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Emmett School District has many great opportunities to offer kids especially for the small

community we have.

Work History Service and/or Extracurricular Activities

In my short 23 years of life I have held many different positions, for several different companies.

I have even started and owned a couple of my own businesses. The very first job I had was at a

fruit orchard, working the register, sorting, and bagging fruit. Then when I was old enough I got

a job at the local Mcdonalds. I worked their for about 8 months. In that time my job was to work

the cash register, take orders, bag orders, help customers, make food, clean the lobby. After

Mcdonalds I jus baby sat from time to time while being focused in school, and 4-H. When I

graduated High school, I got a job at Starbucks as a barista. The 10 months I was there my main

jobs besides making coffee drinks was, customer service, cleaning, preparing food, making

samples. This was by far the best job I had up to this point. In February of 2014 I decided to

move to Boise and I needed a better job to help pay for an apartment with my roommate. I got a

job at WDS as a tech support representative for Verizon this job was just not for me. While I was

there my job was to answer calls pertaining to Verizon phones, bills, and technical issues. I am a

very face to face person so I was not having it at all. I had decided to go to cosmetology school

shortly after starting this job so I quit, and moved home. While attending cosmetology school I

got a job at Victoria’s Secret. This was a bucket list job for me and well any girl I know really.

While I worked at Victoria’s Secret my main jobs were working cash register, up selling at the

cash register, working the floor, sorting and folding all merchandise, bra fitting specialist, I even

started training for front end manager. While working at Victoria’s secret I got a second job at

Emmett Independent School District where I became a substitute teacher. My job here entails

teaching all grades from k-12 being able to adapt to each learning skill to my best ability. I
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eventually graduated cosmetology school, so I then searched for a cosmetology job. My parents

own a salon in Emmett, so the search did not last long. So, at this point I had 3 full time jobs, I

was going crazy. So, I had to do whatever girl dreads, I put my two weeks in at Victoria’s secret.

I continued to work at the salon and substitute teach for some time, until I got offered a nanny

job, so I of course had to look at my busy schedule but again I had 3 full time jobs. After a while

I realized the hair industry was just not for me. So, I took on fulltime nannying, and substitute

teaching. Then I got the wild idea to open up my own daycare, that was a huge hit I had 7 kids on

any good day. My jobs were to feed, teach, and care for all the kids I if they were my own.

January 2017 came around and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t quite where I wanted to

be at in life so I decided to enroll in college, so that meant I needed to let my kids go and

dissolve Hollys daycare. After I dissolved the daycare I was still substitute teaching. I then

started up one of my current businesses Diamond H Photography, because well I work better

when I am a busy person. I have done about a hundred photo shoots in less than a year my name

has gotten put out there quite a bit. I figured I better get a job close to my school so I found

Motel 6 by the airport was hiring. I got the front desk job and that is where I currently work. My

job entails customer service, working the cash register, making sure people are checked in,

checked out, making sure people have actually left their rooms, and dealing with angry

customers. How could a person like me get any busier? Easy answer take on a 4-H club. My

parents started this club when I was 10 years old, the reason for them starting this club was

because non of the other clubs in my county let me show more than one animal. All my sisters

and I show pigs and sheep, and the little one shows chickens. So that was going to be a problem.

Well my last year showing was my Senior year in high school. Once I graduated my step mom

handed me the club and said good luck. My job is to instill many different lessons into each one
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of my kids. I have about 15 kids in my group who show anything from pigs, to pygmy goats, to

cattle, to sheep, to chickens, to otters. You name it my kids have probably shown it. I am a busy

person but I work better while I am busy.

One of the biggest Dilemmas the education field faces today is classroom size. This

dilemma is almost caused by a domino type effect. Large classroom sizes are due to lack of

teachers. Lack of teachers is caused by many different one of them being pay. So here we are a

school district with high turnover rates and large class sizes. This is going to lead to lower

graduation stats, and more problems with the children. Class room size is something every

school should look at. It not only effects the children, but the school itself. With a bigger

classroom the less one on one-time children have with their teacher. The less time children have

with their teacher then leans toward bad grades. With bad grades comes lower graduation rates,

which in turn looks bad on the school. Like I said class room sizes are just a domino effect

leading to bad grades, and a worse school district. Most parents want the absolute best for their

children which means if they don’t have the grades that parents think they should have a majority

of the time the parents will pull them from one school district and put them in another, to give

them a better chance for college opportunities. So, with that being said when parents pull

children out of school to put them in another school that school will obviously lose money.

Losing money means the school is going to have to start cutting back on extracurricular

activities, and it might even come to having to let teachers go. So now we are back to if we have

to let teachers go and we still have kids coming into this school the classrooms sizes are going to

increase. How do we fix this problem? Well how we fix all of our problems! Money! Schools

need all the funding they can get. When they talk about school levies and most of the community

is in an up rise about their taxes that are going to increase. Look at it this way you can have an
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increase in taxes, and a safe community versus low taxes and a unsafe community because kids

that have dropped out of school and have nothing better to do but terrorize the community. So,

one short easy answer for a little problem that can affect everyone in a community, everyone

must stand behind the youth and help them move forward in their life. It only takes one person to

leave an impact on a child, remember that the next time levee votes are up for debate.

The reason for Choosing Education as a Career

From the young age of 5 I was the little girl who always had to be the teacher, whenever

we played school. From there on out each one of my teachers in grade school always partnered

me with the troubled kid in the class room. They would always pull me aside and say I know you

can handle them, and help them learn something. I knew deep down that this was my calling in

life. I was put here to be a teacher. As I grew older I constantly knew that I wanted and needed to

be a teacher. My senior year I took an education assistant class, where I got to go into a

classroom for a full year and help teach little kids. I chose a first grade class. I was put in charge

of the reading group of kids who struggled. I even had a little girl who just moved from china,

she did not know any English at this time. By the time I was done you would of never known she

did not speak English. My heart was whole, I knew this is where I was suppose to be. This little

girl transferred to California in the middle of the school year. One day towards the end of then

year she came back to surprise Mrs. Kunka and I and when she ran through that door, and said

“Hi, Miss Holly!” my heart sank she remembers me. She came over and gave me a big hug and

told me thank you for helping me speak. I ended up hitting a wall after graduation. I didn’t know

what I wanted to do. I decided to take a break and just work. That was all fine and dandy but I

just knew that I wasn’t where I wanted to be in life. So I thought about it and some how got that I

wanted to be a cosmetologist. So I went to cosmetology school, graduated and got a job doing
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hair. Yet again I didn’t feel as if I was where I wanted to be at. I took a job substitute teaching,

and I had one of the teachers come in and tell me you would make an amazing teacher this job

just fits you perfectly. So that very day I got on the computer and decided to enroll in school.

Here I am today this is my second semester and I would not change it for the world. I finally feel

as if I am where I need to be. I still substitute teach during the week, and those days that I teach

make my week a thousand times better.

Professional Goals

I want to acquire my associates degree in elementary education. I then would like to

transfer to Boise State and obtain my Bachelors degree in elementary education. After all of that

I would like to obtain my first job in the Emmett Independent School district as a 3rd or 5th grade

teacher.

Short term goals

My short-term goal is to prioritize my work and school schedule a little better. I am a

busy person juggling two full time jobs, going to school full time, and being a leader in a 4-H

club. I will achieve these goals by making myself be more accountable to all the little things in

life that I use to just let slide. The world doesn’t stop when you are tired, and want a nap.

Pushing through all of these trials will make be a better teacher, and appreciate my job because I

earned it by working my absolute hardest.