My journey on Twitter started last year as I was documenting my experience as a student teacher. My university published an article about my Twitter usage which made me feel uplifted by all the support.
Then, all of a sudden, after successfully passing EDTPA and my content test, I was about to graduate which was truly a surreal experience for me due to dreaming about this moment my whole life. I graduated cum laude in May with a cord for doing a leadership pillar, an Honors cord, and being recognized with departmental honors as well. I was finally seeing that my hard work did pay off, and it was not about the recognition for me but rather the journey that I was on and my future ahead. I worked hard in college, and that does not mean that I did not struggle. I was fortunate to have amazing professors who genuinely cared about my success and wanted me to go into the world and make a change. Graduation, for me, meant a lot because I was the first person in my family to graduate with a Bachelors, and hearing my dad say that he was proud of me meant so much. My parents have given me everything that I could have ever wanted, and their journey was not easy. They were born in Poland and moved to the United States a few years before my sister and I were born. They ended up living on the top floor of my grandparents house in Chicago for a few years prior to moving to a house nearby. They were both working while knowing minimal English, and my mom ended up finishing her Associates without knowing much English. My parents are the embodiment of the American Dream to me, and they inspire me to work hard and achieve my dreams because they did all that successfully even with obstacles in their way. Soon after graduation, I received an offer for a teaching position, and I accepted. A tweet surfaced about a first year teacher shower and how that would be beneficial to 1st year teachers. Due to having a community on Twitter who supports me 110 percent of the way, they decided to support me in this new chapter of my journey. At first, I got a message from @SRyan3rdgrade who told me to pick out 25 dollars worth of items on eurekaschool.com. Due to wanting to do a Disney theme, I picked those out, and I received the items shortly after. Then, I had four amazing teachers (@Vegas3DKids, @RhondaStroud9, @hayes_melisa, and @msyoung114) donate 25 dollar gift cards on Amazon to help me get the materials I need for my classroom. Yesterday, I received about 20 books from @JackieNieukirk who is a principal from Peoria and knew that those books would be beneficial due to me starting my career. Shortly after that, one of the teachers who donated 25 dollars messaged me asking if it was okay if she would set up a gofundme on my behalf. I was speechless and said yes, and as of right now, four individuals have donated 20 dollars. I am speechless thinking about how blessed I truly am. I am spending my own money on classroom supplies, and as a new teacher, it is absolutely not an easy process, but I never thought that I would receive this much support. It reminds me that amazing people do exist who truly have a heart of gold. So much so that they are supporting a new teacher like me who they have never met in person. The teacher who set up the gofundme mentioned that she found me to be hopeful, caring, and very inspirational and can tell that I was meant to be a teacher. Of course, that means a lot, and as I was on a walk with my mom getting exercise later in the evening, as I was looking through the tweets, I began to have tears in my eyes because, although I always try to show kindness to others, I have never received this amount of kindness. I have been blessed by amazing individuals in my life such as former teachers, former professors, my parents, and others who have absolutely been kind to me, but this was a whole different way to show kindness because it made me overwhelmed with the support and genorisity. If you are reading this and are on Twitter, please take the time to thank the educators who are linked above and who have donated to help me out. Their support is incredible, and they leave me feeling hopeful, inspired, and wanting to give back and change the world one student at a time.
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AuthorMy name is Susan, and I will be starting my first year of teaching this year. Archives
December 2018
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