Like most people, my career path has changed multiple times over the past few years. Although I have been involved in numerous groups and activities, one thing has stayed constant: my desire to share my knowledge with others. My passion for teaching has been fostered since a young age. Through my involvement in activities such as the Boy Scouts, tutoring, leading peer groups, and serving as a Teacher’s Assistant in college, I was free to explore different teaching styles and identify both my strengths and weaknesses as an educator. Currently, my passion for education and learning has culminated into my faculty position in the Upper School Science Department at a local private school. At this school, I teach ninth grade Introductory Biology, a course that covers a range of topics including evolution and social Darwinism, cell division and cancer, macromolecules and nutrition, ecology and climate change, and much more. This course has been designed by my colleagues and I to emphasize student-centered, inquiry based, hands on learning rather than lessons that are more teacher centered and lecture-based. This curriculum has been a welcome challenge that allows me to consistently reflect on my role and effectiveness as an educator, a useful motivator in the endless quest for growth.
In addition to my faculty position, I am also enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education in their Independent School Teaching Residency program. While part of this program consists of working as a teacher, the other component involves the completion of a Master’s degree in secondary education studies at Penn. The coursework for this degree is comprehensive, stimulating, and all-encompassing. We discuss the history of progressive education, various pedagogical tools and strategies, self-reflection, classroom management, teaching styles, and how to promote a growth mindset in all of our students regardless of race, class, gender, sexuality, or any other aspect of their identity. This coursework has been critical in my development as a young educator and continues to fuel my passion for education.
The opportunities offered by Princeton Tutoring, therefore, are extremely pertinent to my pursuits in both my career and my life. Some of the most rewarding aspects of education are the one-on-one moments between students and teachers. It is within these moments that students have the greatest capacity to grow as individuals and as students. Some of my most memorable accomplishments in my first year of teaching were made when helping and encouraging a struggling student or commending and pushing a flourishing one. It is in moments like these that teachers have the most influence on their students, and it is because of that that I would like to continue expanding my impact beyond that of the school at which I work.