Just Thinking About It

So I've been thinking about the whole Peace Corps thing for a long time. I remember hearing about it in middle school and thinking in the back of my head that it sounded kind of interesting. I first began to really research Peace Corps my first year of college after taking a cultural anthropology class and a service learning class. I remember in the anthropology class my first quarter of college reading a whole book on the Ju'hoansi people. They were hunter-gather people who lived in parts of Nambia, Botswana,Zambia, Angola, and other parts of southern Africa. I was so fascinated that these people still lived like this. There were lots of different cultures that we studied and it really started to open my eyes a little more as to what else is out there and how different other parts of the world are. My second quarter of college I took a service learning class where I met Kori. She was my volunteer leader who set up my group's volunteer site at a local elementary school for tutoring. Kori also got me interested in Big Brothers Big Sisters and other community organizations. She was in AmeriCorps and spoke very highly of the program. I began researching AmeriCorps and as a result came back to thinking about Peace Corps again.

Meanwhile, I realized that I was only 18 and had to stay focused my college education. I think when I really started to think about PC again more seriously was my senior year of college. I was about to graduate and was still waiting to see if I got into grad school. I remember telling myself that if I didn't' get into grad school that I was going to apply for PC. I did get into the grad school so I put PC on the back burner. However, 14 months later as I was finishing my master's and trying to find a teaching position, I began to think about PC once again. However, I did find a teaching position teaching sixth grade math, which I had done two student teaching placements in so I felt it was a perfect fit.

My first two years of teaching had ups and downs, as all new things do. I was able to try out many of the teaching strategies that I had learned about in college on real kids in a real classroom of my own. I was able to experience what it felt like to be responsible for real kids' learning while feeling the pressure from statewide testing. I was able experience what it feels like to be a room with thirty 11-12 year old kids and be the only adult :) I learned that I thought I had a lot of patience, but now had the opportunity to practice that patience even more. I was able to work with some of the most amazing educators who I know I will long remember as people who helped shape me as a teacher and as a person. I was able to work with a diverse group of kids. The socioeconomic range of the kids I worked with was interesting - some kids had next to nothing while the kid sitting next to him would be talking about his latest luxery vacation. Some kids had so much support from their families while other kids it seemed had little or no support from their families. I guess I knew that it was like that but it was very frustrating to not have control or be able to help more. In many ways I entered teaching hoping to "make a difference". After two years I realize that my goal shouldn't be so broad. Instead it should simply be to let kids know that I do care and that I want them to be successful in school and in life. In the context of a school, I think its easy to lose sight that that should be the ultimate goal. I learned that kids and people in general are really all the same - they want someone to listen to them and care about them. In many ways I questioned myself and my abilities. Part of that I think is due to lack of experience -lack of teaching experience, lack of my own life experiences, and lack of my understanding of the community that I was teaching in.

This is when I began to think about Peace Corps very seriously. I remember over the holiday break of my second year of teaching reading and researching PC online and reading several books from the public library. That's when I decided that I would apply. I really felt that PC would give me an opportunity, over two years that is, to really learn about other people, learn about myself, and better understand what direction I want to take with my career/life.