The largest employment experience that made me want to be a teacher was my experience at TRU Sport Camps! While working at Sport Camps, from 2016 to 2020, I learned more than I ever thought a summer job would teach me. I spent my days planning activities for groups of children from age 4-14! When I first took this job, I thought it would be playing fun games in the sun with kids all day. Of course, it ended up being so much more than that. I was constantly ensuring that all the campers were safe, being kind, and having fun. It gave me a glimpse into the life of a teacher with none of the curriculum (and every week I got an all new camp!) I learned how to deal with the big feelings that come along with small children as well as how to help children feel safe and heard. I had a lot of fun along the way too.
Another employment experience that had an impact on my future career choice was my job as a tutor at a well-known education company. While tutoring for this company, I was able to spend 50 minutes per student, virtually. My biggest takeaway from this experience is that there are many better ways to help students with their understanding than we were able to do online in 50 minutes. In the future, I will take the lessons that I learned with this experience into my future classroom. I will strive to give each student the time and supports that they need to help them achieve what they want to achieve! Each individual student that I had the pleasure of working with taught me their own, intricate lessons that I will remember for my future experiences.
The final employment experience that I would like to share is my experience at the Bright Red Book Bus as a Literacy Leader! I spent the summer of 2021 driving around a big bus full of books and giving free books to the children in the community. It was incredibly fun to work here and this is the feedback that I gave to the program:
“Working on the Book Bus was an amazing experience for many reasons, but my absolute favorite part of each day was when a child would walk up the the bus and see a book that they wanted and they would do that little excited gasp that we all do when we see something perfect for us. Seeing the joy that these books brought to so many kids around town was so cool, and I am very proud to have been a part of the program.”
Throughout the summer, I again learned many valuable lessons. The diversity of the city was something that I never thought much of before but it became very evident to me over the weeks we travelled around on the bus. The biggest takeaway for me was that no matter how exciting video games can get, kids still get SO excited about books! It made me incredibly happy to see the joy that the books we distributed gave the recipients!
