Apple Tree Prep Personal Statement

Ever since I was young, I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher. When I would stay the night with my aunt’s or at my grandmother’s house for the summer, I would always create math worksheets and roll calls for my cousins to fill out because they were my students. When I was in middle and high school, I began helping with the children’s church, always finding an interest in teaching new material to children and watching as their faces glowed when they finally understood something that was new to them. From my experience of being in the afterschool classroom of Apple Tree Prep, I have learned a lot of lasting advice to help better me as a future elementary school educator. Whether it is to deal with the loss of a pet to having to help prepare

While I was completing my field experience, I was working in the afterschool room every other Tuesday and Thursday. The grades of the twenty-six students ranged from first grade to fourth grade and there were more females than males in this class. My two mentors, Kelly and Brooke, were awesome, showing me how to keep up with these older children while also keeping peace within the chaotic classroom. While these children were from Watkinsville, they really were not from a low SES background, but there were many instances that the children would get into arguments and bring up someone else’s family

A lot of the children like to work on their homework at home, because they enjoy the comforts of their own space. Anna* and Grey* are two children that I always had to folders for. At Rocky Branch Elementary School (RBES), the teachers sent the students home with folders. These folders held important papers that need to be sent home to parents, graded papers, and their homework for the day. I always had to check Anna* and Grey’s* folders, because they dreaded doing their homework every day. When Grey* did his homework, he would become frustrated very quickly. When Grey would get angry while doing his homework, he normally would lash out and become extremely sharp-tongued. After a few minutes of calming him down, Grey would be fine and finish his homework with little to no help from me. Anna, however, reacted the opposite of Grey while doing her homework. Anna told me once that whenever she had reading assignments, her mother would tell her that she read too slow and would end up doing the homework for her. Anna is currently in fourth grade, and the second graders in the afterschool classroom can read a lot better than she can. When Anna told me of what her mother said, I responded with, “When you do homework with me, you will be reading your work and I will help you with any questions you have.” She was upset at first since she never really put effort