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I was actually born in Virginia but I only lived there
for about 18 months.I grew up in Kernersville. I grew up a
Chapel Hill fan, always said I was going to go to UNC, always
wanted to be a Tar Heel. I even explored Wilmington because I loved
the beach and then when I looked into the program,
the actual education, you know I thought to myself, I could go to
the basketball games, I could lay at the beach but is that what I’m really going to college
for. And , no, that’s not – of course you want
a good experience, but I got that too at UNCG. The Teaching Fellows
Program at UNCG is fabulous, it is absolutely fabulous. UNCG, you know now the key term
in education is rigorous – well UNCG Teaching Fellows are rigorous.
From the second semester of your freshman year you are in the classroom, you are learning
the things that you don’t learn until you are actually in the classroom,
until you are actually observing and doing hands-on things with the kids and seeing what
teachers go through on a daily basis you don’t know and UNCG, and Teaching Fellows at UNCG
is one of the only Teaching Fellows program to actually get you in
the classroom that soon. The leaders at Teaching Fellows at UNCG have really, really,
set in place things for you to be a good teacher, based on
– you might not get it at the time - but it really does help.
Miss Cooper, Dr. Cooper, she >made us go on all of these different adventures.
Some people had to pretend they were homeless and go to
a soup kitchen eat the meals as if they were homeless.
I had to go to an AA meeting and pretend that I was an alcoholic. And
see what it was like. All these things, and at the time I’m like “That’s
out of my comfort zone”, I wasn’t ready to do those things but
when you are in this classroom, you’ve got to be out of your comfort
zone. You know, you have parents walk in that are so different than you are,
you know, Teaching Fellows just really, really, just prepares you to be a teacher beyond what
you realize at the time and you’ll, I now reflect and look back
and see, Wow, I can’t imagine not having that experience
because it really helped me to be the teacher I am today.