A Life Journey Towards Becoming an Educator

I am Brianna Kutas and I grew up in a small town in Saskatchewan about an hour and a half away from Regina called Ituna. Aside from living in Regina during my first year of university for a few months, I have lived here in Ituna my whole life with my mom, dad, and little brother. I attended Ituna School growing up where I completed kindergarten to grade twelve. I didn’t participate in many activities until I was older, which included things like Ukrainian dance, volleyball, curling, badminton, flag football, track, and the yearbook club. I graduated in 2019 and I began my first year of university in the Faculty of Science during the fall 2019 semester, but switched into the Faculty of Education for this fall 2020 semester. When I was younger, I was always taught by my family to be respectful and responsible. My family is a strong believer of the idea that everything happens for a reason, which I believe to be true as well. When I reflect on my past and present life, it is important to think about my experiences in school, the reasons for why I want to become an educator, and how my past has affected what type of teacher I would like to become in the future.

Growing up in a small town meant that I had a fairly small class. I graduated with nineteen students, although a couple of them didn’t actually graduate. I would say that I had a pretty good experience throughout my years in school. I generally had the same group of friends growing up, but as I aged, I began making new friends outside of my age group and town. The main reason that my school years were easy was because my mom was a part of my school system throughout the whole journey. While I was in kindergarten to grade eight, my mom was an educational assistant until I hit grade nine, when she became the secretary. I felt much more confident having my mom in the learning environment with me, being that she is one of my biggest supports and inspirations. I also had multiple teachers that were close family friends so I was able to build relationships with them and had good personal connections with them that benefited my learning experience. I had a few rough patches during school since I struggle with stress and anxiety, but I always had someone there who understood what I was going through.

The lessons and knowledge that I gained throughout my years of school are some of the main motivations for my decision to become an educator. There are many reasons for why I want to become a teacher, but one of the main reasons is my grandma. She was also a teacher and I even got the chance to have her as my substitute throughout my grade two year which was very significant to me. I can still remember her songs and how I used to steal her green peppers during snack time. Throughout high school, I always respected my teachers for the work that they did. I had one specific teacher, my high school science teacher, who majorly influenced my decision of wanting to become an educator. She taught me Science 10, Native Studies 10, Health Science 20, Physical Science 20, Biology 30, Chemistry 30, and Physics 30. She was always so organized with new science experiments or activities to help us learn and had a unique teaching style that was different from other teachers. In grade ten, I got the chance to do some work experience and I chose to help out alongside my aunt, the grade one teacher, in her classroom for about a month. This experience showed me that I did not like working with young children, but I enjoyed the marking and preparation that each day involved. Being that I did not like working with the young kids, this made me realize that I would make a better high school teacher.

My past has had a huge impact, and continues to have a huge impact, on the type of teacher that I want to be in the future. Throughout my years of school, I had teachers that I was very fond of, but I also had teachers that I despised. Getting to experience so many different types of teaching styles has impacted the way that I would like to educate when I become a teacher. In my grade twelve year, I had an English teacher that was unreasonable and did not have a lot of logic behind her actions. During my grade eleven year, I had a principal that taught me a couple of my classes and she treated everyone fairly while still always being there for me for support. I had plenty of other experiences with teachers, but I was overall pretty lucky to have the teachers that I had. Being that I had these negative and positive experiences with teachers, I am now able to see that I want to be a polite, organized, and reasonable teacher with a main goal of helping students to achieve their very best. I am a strong believer that a person has to be very organized in order to be an educator to provide the best learning experience for the students.

By analyzing my life experiences, I am able to understand how I have become the person that I am today. I have always wanted to become a teacher, but when it came to high school, people would often tell me that I was too smart to become a teacher and that I should pursue a career that would make me more money. These opinions always made me question my future, being that I was the valedictorian with an average of 97.8% upon graduation so I began considering going into things such as pharmacy or dental assistance. As I continued to think about it, I was very interested in the science field, but I was never sure about where that would take me. It wasn’t until I was half way done my second semester of university that I decided that I for sure wanted to become an educator. I finally came to this decision because while in university, I got the chance to learn about other programs, but none of them excited me like education does. There are so many small things in life that have influenced my future, but I never realized this until I thoroughly analyzed my life story.