I knew from the moment I stepped into my first school, Franklin Elementary School, that I was going to be a teacher when I grew up. Looking back at my “Through the Years” journal my mother and I completed every year throughout my schooling reminds me of my desire to teach from the young age of five years old. Re-reading my teachers’ report card comments and notes reinstalls that they saw the teacher in me, too. I had a particular connection to my first grade teacher, Mrs. Gilleran. I saw her and still see her as the ideal role model for being a caring and compassionate educator.
My college math teacher also played an important role in my journey. At the end of class one day, she called me up to her desk. She said, “Dawn, the way you solved that problem today was very creative. I’ve never had a student approach that problem in the way you did.” I was horrified, yes horrified. Never in my life had I been told I was creative. I was a “left-brained, numbers” person. I had a fixed mindset. I was good at working calculations, following algorithms, problem-solving, but definitely not creative. She reinforced this idea and I walked out of her class in tears with a new perspective of my mind and what I could achieve. I started exploring my creativity and now see myself not only as a numbers person but also as a very creative thinker and maker! That day my mindset went from fixed in nature to a growth mindset.
One day many years later, I was sitting in a motivational seminar for my new job in the mortgage industry. The speaker was a retired teacher named Dave who was oddly dressed in a Superman costume. He was there to motivate us to sell mortgage insurance which was not something I was really interested in doing. Throughout his speech, he kept referring to his own teaching experiences. As he went on, it became more and more apparent to me that I was figuratively and quite literally sitting in the wrong chair in life. Upon completion of the seminar, I wiped the tears away and immediately sought out my boss to give my notice. I went to graduate school a couple months later at the University of Michigan School of Education, completed a one-year intensive graduate program with teaching certification, and never looked back. It was the second-best decision of my life next to marrying my husband!
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