Personal Narrative: My Experience At Bellingham High School

Woodring has given me several opportunities to engage with the larger Bellingham community. I was first able to more fully engage with Bellingham’s community through my practicum placement at Bellingham High School. My experience at the high school has brought me to three English Language Learner students. These students have become the brightest part of my week. While I do not share a language with these students, we have created a bond. I am able to mentor these students and provide for them the extra help they need to succeed in their ninth grade English class, where they were unable to receive the attention they needed in order to convey their ideas before. Woodring courses have also brought me to two different middle schools: Shuksan and Kulshan. At both of these middle schools I have been given the opportunity to get to know several middle school aged students of different backgrounds. While Kulshan serves a more well-off set of students than …show more content…
This vision inspires me to not just get to know my students and to not just teach them the curricula, but to teach these students in accordance to their cultural strengths and personal abilities. Every student deserves to grow and learn. Each student deserves to feel safe and cared for when at school and it is the teacher’s duty to create this environment. Growing up with very little money and very little support for me to attend a university allows for me to approach the Woodring College of Education vision with a different view from most. It is exceptionally important to me that every student feels that they have received the support that they need. My experiences at Bellingham High School, which are described above, have only reinforced my desire to make sure every student is treated equitably. By getting to know the students I work with I gain their trust, which is critical to being able to teach students based upon their