That's me!
I come from a pretty small town in Williamson County, Tennessee, and am about to graduate from Mercer University, which is in Macon, Georgia. I came in as a history major on the pre-law track, but quickly figured out that law was not going to be a thing for me. I would never be happy sitting behind a desk all day!
During my first semester at Mercer, a local high school asked me to come run a debate workshop for them. I debated for four years before college, and also debate for Mercer, so I figured I would do it to make a little money and maybe get some kids excited about debate. In the middle of this workshop I was leading, a realization hit me like a freight train: I was having more FUN teaching these kids how to debate than I had in a long time. I started considering teaching, and took a few education classes at Mercer. I switched to an English major with secondary certification, and the rest is history.
Mercer's Tift College of Education is an amazing, demanding program. Getting my certification was going to add another 33 hours, the equivalent of a second major, to my courseload and I didn't decide for sure that I wanted to teach until my sophomore year. Throw in weekly practices and monthly travel for my debate team, there was no way I would be able to fulfill the requirements for my secondary certification and stay on the team. I dropped my certification down to a minor in Teacher Education, and told myself I would go to a graduate program that attaches certification after Mercer. Thankfully, my debate team helped prepare me to teach in the communities I want to serve in a way that I don't think many classes or textbooks would have (more on that later).
Hi, Team!
During my junior year at Mercer, an amazing opportunity came up for me to coach my own high school debate team. No more running workshops and tagging pathetically along with other coaches' teams- I was going to get to coach my own! I went to work for Tiftarea Academy, a small private school, coaching some incredible kids...and driving an hour and a half one way to their school once a week. Despite the distance, we've had a successful two years and my kids have taught me so much about being a teacher. They are fabulous.
The airbrushed t-shirts are super fly.
The summer after my first year coaching, another great opportunity landed right in my lap. I was asked to direct a division of Samford University's Summer Debate Institute. This one-week camp for high school debaters was the only time I questioned for a second whether or not teaching was for me. I had over a dozen debaters in my division, most of them first-time debaters who had never seen a round. I went from coaching the nearly all-girl team I was used to at Tiftarea to teaching a camp that was almost all-boys. It was a totally different dynamic to manage, and I spent Day 3 of this camp wanting to pull out my hair and burst into tears. But we made it through, dealt with one medical emergency (scariest moment of my life), and put on a great tournament at the end of the camp. It ended up being one of the best experiences of my life, and definitely helped prepare me to teach in a way I didn't expect. I love keeping up with my "summer kids" now and following all of their successes.
Ended up loving each and every one of these special kids. You guys rock!
Enter my senior year of college, and I'm frantically applying for graduate programs. As I'm spending hundreds of dollars on exams and application fees, I still have this sinking feeling in my stomach that maybe going straight into graduate school is not what I want to do. But without my teaching certification, I could end up working in Starbucks.
I remembered my debate coaches telling me about Teach For America, and I had seen some posters up around my university's campus. At the very last minute, for the very last deadline, I decided to apply for the program. Teach For America is an organization that recruits people, mostly recent college graduates, to teach in underprivileged schools throughout the U.S. Though I would be happy teaching anywhere, I have always wanted to go into the school communities that are the neediest. This is not because I'm under the impression that I am uniquely qualified to do this (in fact, I'm terrified about having this responsibility, but more on that later) but because I feel that I can do this type of work with a smile on my face every day. For me, teaching is a form of social activism, and a career one should go into with the mindset of shaking things up and breaking down the systems of oppression that push some children forwards while shoving other children down. Reading Teach For America's mission statement, I felt that the organization was a perfect fit for me. I'm aware of the criticisms of Teach For America. I'm aware that five weeks of summer training do not an extraordinary teacher make. But unlike many of their applicants, I want to be a career teacher. This is not a detour off my chosen path for me, but something I want to do for the rest of my life.
Ok, so that's enough of the disclaimer statement. I went in for my final interview for Teach For America. It was super nerve-wracking, because you have to teach a five-minute lesson in front of your interviewers AND the other applicants. I was up nearly all night preparing a glorious lesson on literary themes to teach, but I ended up scrapping this once I got there and teaching something debate-related. This was a good decision. Lesson #1: Stick to the stuff you know.
The interview experience was actually fantastic. I loved meeting the other applicants and learning why they wanted to be teachers.
My interview group was so fun, and really got me fired up to be a teacher.
After the final interview, it was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. Yesterday, I checked my e-mail about a thousand times and reloaded my online applicant status about three thousand times until I finally got my answer:
I was sitting at my desk at work when I got this message. Burst into tears, because that's how worried I was that I wouldn't get it!
Mississippi was not one of my top choices. In fact, it was one of my last choices. But I have been praying about this for months, and had all my family praying, too. I firmly believe that God has a special purpose for my life, and if I need to go to Mississippi, I'll go to Mississippi. I have a lot of fears. I'm worried about the fact that there won't be any Indian restaurants in rural Mississippi. I'm worried about leaving all my friends here in Georgia and moving somewhere where literally, the nearest friend or family member I have is 4.5 hours away. I'm sad about entering another year of long distance with my fiance, who lives in Atlanta. We've done it before for a year, but it was not fun by any means. I'm worried about how I'm going to pay for this move and support myself with a teacher salary on my own two feet. But underneath all these fears is the conviction that this is right for me; that this is what I was meant to do; that Mississippi, for whatever reason, is going to be a great fit. I can't wait to start this journey, and meet all my kids!
I hope that this blog can be a space where I vent, share the things I'm learning, and brag about my kids. Though I haven't met them yet, and actually have no idea whatsoever what school, or even what city, I'll be placed in, I have no doubt that my kids are the best kids in the world. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more about my region and how you can help me on this journey (I will definitely be asking you for $$$).
-Love, Linds
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