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| I had plenty of courage my first year teaching in 2001--pictured here, I am wearing my Spirit Week Tacky Day attire! |
My Mentor: Mrs. Dr. Eggers
“The best gift we
receive from great mentors is not their knowledge or their approval or their
approach to teaching but the sense of self they evoke within us.”
Dr.
Eggers is prim and proper, a short elfin woman with pixie hair and the quiet
capacity to intimidate even the biggest football player, the toughest “tough”
guy. Most vividly, I recall her classy
demeanor, the way she carried herself with such self-respect; therefore both
demanding it from and giving it to others.
She came off as superiorly intelligent, but she didn’t brag about her
intellect. But she wasn’t squeaky clean,
either. She was quirky—always wearing
big chunky jewelry from the many interesting places she’d visited. And when I was in high school, she was
admittedly agnostic, at a time and in a place where being anything other than
Christian was dangerous.
When
I first met Dr. Eggers in her S.A.T. Prep course, she represented the opposite
of everything I was, the opposite of all the women in my life—mainly because
she was stable and normal, so I was highly intimidated by her and in awe. However, Dr. Eggers was immensely caring
about her students, and I was desperately in need of a savior, even more than a
role model. She insisted that we call
her “Mrs.” Rather than “Dr.”, but I never could.
It wasn’t until
the second time I was her student, the next year, in APP English, comparable to AP English, that she
truly took me under her wing. She worked
hard to teach me to take myself seriously so that others could. Until that point, my survival mechanism was
to make light of everything. The
constant giggling and buffoonery served two functions: I really did become adept at laughing
everything off, and my sunny demeanor kept others from looking too closely, too
critically, at my life. Dr. Eggers saw
through the giggles, perhaps because I didn’t hesitate to write the truth about
the tragedies in my life. My intelligence
was undeniable—it was just my self-worth that was in doubt.
Dr. Eggers got
“scholarship money” to pay for the APP courses so I could get college credit
through Appalachian. She stayed with me
after school and gave me pointers on how to talk with an adult without giggling
after every statement. She bought me an
outfit to do scholarship interviews and bought me the white shoes I needed for
graduation. After graduation, she helped
me get my first teaching job and was my unofficial mentor. She even loaned me the money to buy my first
decent car!
Dr.
Eggers was an expert in her subject, but, more importantly, she wasn’t afraid
to reach out to me as a person, to interact with me emotionally. I was ripe for
a mentor, desperately in need of an adult to recognize both my need and
talent. My quirkiness ha long been
off-putting, but we were well-matched.
She revealed to me the power of my emotional strength, especially as she
helped me survive my sister’s death my senior year. I had survived a lot, I could be proud of
that, and she taught me that I could use my life experiences to my advantage
moving forward.
Why I Teach
I
knew I wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember, doing the clichéd
teaching school to my stuffed animals as early as three. Once I actually became a student, that desire
deepened. I craved the orderliness
teachers seemed to embody, how they always looked “pulled-together,” calm, and
sophisticated. I loved and looked up to
my teachers, and I wanted people to view me the same way. I was fascinated by learning and all things
intellectual, so I was a studious student, well-liked by teachers. This mutual respect and my natural affinity
for teaching made teaching seem the natural choice as I neared my college
years. Also, I particularly excelled in
reading and writing, and I knew I wanted to major in English. Teaching was the only concrete way I could
foresee actually making a living doing what I love (instead of going the
starving artist route). My Teaching
Fellows scholarship cinched my decision.
I
taught “summer school” as a child, using workbooks my aunt bought to teach my
nieces and nephews. As a senior in high
school, my English teacher allowed me to teach Animal Farm to the class, since I was taking her senior English as
an elective, in addition to the APP English course.
Teaching
is certainly my vocation. I am a social
person, and I thrive on relationships.
As I learned from my mentor and the National Boards process, forming
relationships with my students is a key part to reaching them. I can’t teach people I can’t connect with,
people I can’t understand. I am
creative, and constantly reflecting and tweaking lesson plans puts that quality
to use. I feel so grateful that I am
doing something I love, and that teaching is something I still enjoy after fifteen years of doing it.