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I loved high school, I loved elementary school, I tolerated middle school, because, honestly,
does anyone like anything at that point in their life? Some of my best memories were in the halls of
Clear Creek High School. It's where I made friends that I still speak to on a daily basis and see
regularly. I think this is sometimes a unique viewpoint, but I also think that it could become the rule not
the exception with the right educational plan. In this paper I'm going to tell you how I fell in love with
education by telling you about the effects of my personal and cultural background throughout my
childhood, adolescence, and adulthood and any critical events involving diversity and by telling you
about the impact my teachers have had on me throughout my schooling.
To begin, I grew up in Evergreen, Colorado. Quite possibly one of the whitest places on earth.
It's a small suburb of Denver, although some residents would be thoroughly offended if you called it
that, that is home to the upper and upper middle classes. My cultural background was that of my
surroundings although my dad's side of the family is Mexican and my mom's side is Native American.
Because I was raised this way, I never really identified with anything other than the white culture and
my schooling was not effected in any way.
I think my educators assumed that everyone was raised the same way I was because we learned
through the scope of the average white American. Although, I find it hard to specifically recall
elementary education, I do remember that when I was taught things from the white perspective in
middle and high school, nothing came to a shock to me, so I can assume that that is the way I had been
taught from childhood. We were told the stories of the white American. On one hand, however, I think
that the teachers' assumptions that we were all raised the same way evened our playing fields. We were
all treated the same way and given the same opportunities. No one gender, social class, or race was
given any kind of preferential treatment. Adulthood and being in college, on the other hand, opened my
eyes to new cultures. Not everyone came from the same background and not all of my professors have
been American. These different viewpoints not only helped to educate me on different culture, but I
all in good fun. This kind of relationship was what made my education so effective; it created an
environment that made students feel safe. Teachers were treated with respect but were also treated as
colleagues and mentors. There was a time and a place for joking around and we all understood that. My
teachers in high school have taught me not only about their subjects but about life. This is what made
me want to become a teacher. I learned so much from the past experiences of my teachers; their stories
and advice. I wanted to be able to do for others what they did for me. For instance, I had an English
teacher that convinced me I was smart enough to be a good writer even when I thought I was horrible. I
want to be that for someone. But, by far my best teacher was one that hardly ever spent class time
teaching from a book. He would teach us about life, connect whatever we were learning to how it could
effect or enrich our lives. We always joked that his class wasn't a science class, but a class of life
lessons. He was tough but he was fair and every day you walked out of his class feeling like you
learned something. That's the kind of educator I want to be. I want to be a high school teacher because I
have never had better educators than the ones I had in high school, and I have never learned more.
To sum up, I never lived in a diverse community. I went to school with people of the same
background racially and socio economically. But still, I learned that race didn't matter. Education
doesn't only happen in the classroom. We must strive in our every day lives to be accepting and to
surround ourselves with people that elevate this acceptance. I want to educate because I want to be able
to reach a generation and show them that race doesn't matter and to enrich their lives in way that makes
their education memorable.