Personal Narrative: My Background As An Educator

Arguably, the best word to describe my background as an educator would be ‘atypical,’ as I did not follow the ‘prescribed’ or ‘typical’ trajectory, yet I have been an educator since the age of nineteen. Actually, at first I was a teacher; it was not until my late twenties did I transform into an educator. At nineteen, I taught dance and drama for the Brockton Community Schools. I was on hiatus from my college education because of a financially debilitating car accident. A few years later, I resumed my college education, as a Theatre/Dance major at Emerson College, but went on hiatus again a few years later, with only 2.5 credits remaining to earn my bachelors. I seized the opportunity to dance with a professional company. After a personal discovery journey I returned home to teach dance; this is when I became an educator. …show more content…
I did lesson plans and had a curriculum map for every dance class I taught. I reflected nightly and tweaked and refined my lessons, always with the objectives of creating a rich, rigorous, and meaningful learning environment and transferrable learning experiences. Since leaving the dance industry, I have maintained my philosophy, developed, and honed my praxis. The ‘education’ section of my professional resume boasts seven colleges and universities, with multiple experiences at three of them. My curricula vitae reads like an itinerary for a cruise ship, lessons learned at every port. The prevailing and predominant constant with all of these experiences has been and continues to be my focus on curriculum and instruction, with the driving objective of providing authentic, meaningful, and lasting learning experiences for the students whose learning lives with which I have been trusted. My goal is always to help them, ALL of them, into confident and life-long