Name: Megan Reed
School district: USD 240-Twin Valley
City/State: Bennington, KS
Class/content area taught: 9th/10th/11thEnglish
What you are most excited about with your new career: I am most excited about being around so many new people and, while it’s very hard for me, learning about and improving my own weaknesses. It sounds odd, but if I don’t look forward to the fact that I will need to face my own vulnerabilities, I won’t feel comfortable no matter what I do, so I learned to see those things with a slightly more positive mindset.
What you enjoy most about teaching: I love my students. They are all so unique and watching them become more courageous as they face challenges is so inspiring to me. I also love and cherish the moments when my students figure something out or when they realize that maybe they were a little more capable than they may have originally thought. My students can also be exhausting and I find myself hiding in my blankets by the end of the day sometimes, but that just helps me to realize that I am investing what I can in their lives and I’m OK with that trade-off. I pray it’s helpful somehow.
Ways your school/district has supported you: My school and my co-workers are very supportive of my military career, which is extremely important to me. When I’m gone due to military activities, they help me figure out how to prepare for the absence, and they also give me a little courage when I come back after my absence. It can be difficult to jump back into teaching lessons again when you have been gone for a couple of days and you’re exhausted because you didn’t get the weekend to rest a bit like most of your peers did. My school family support me in that way, but they also remind me everyday that it is OK to be human and, as a first-year teacher, to just be that–a first-year teacher. It helps me because I am very hard on myself, so having people about me who understand me and guide me, helps to take some of the pressure off.
Ways KSU especially helped prepare you for your new career: K-State helped me prepare for this career because the college instilled in me the discipline and understanding necessary for teaching. I took courses in college that gave me a base later on, such as my curriculum classes and my “internships” every semester. I would never have continued with teaching had it not been for the professors I had and the way they taught and the passion they taught with. It was a wonderful influence.
Specifics about your background that make teaching the perfect fit for you: My mother was a teacher and my father taught a little, as well as being an officer in the military. I would, with 100 percent certainty, say that my parents helped prepare me for my teaching path because they made me face every challenge I came across as a child and young adult. The phrases “I can’t” or “I quit” were never allowed in my lexicon. My family gave me courage, belief, and a swift kick in the rump sometimes, when I wanted nothing more than to back away from challenges, and in this job, you can’t back away. You have to have a certain amount of tenacity and fire. You have to be willing to fall on your face, get back up, do it again, and so on. My father once told me that when you’re walking down the road of life and find an obstacle in your path, you have to find a way around that obstacle, whether that is climbing over it, going around it or just blowing the sucker up. You figure it out. So, I use that to try and work out the “obstacles” in my day as a teacher, whether that is when a lesson plan goes completely off course or students needs a little extra understanding and they are showing it in a way that can be a little more exhausting than anything else. You find a way.
I can also say with 100 percent certainty that my husband, who has the patience of a saint, taught me more about seeing life from someone else’s perspective and walking in their shoes than I ever learned before I met him. I try and keep that mentality with me wherever I go because every student I come across is fighting his or her own battle. I’m naturally a little harsher by nature, which I think is what is necessary sometimes, but the same could be said for someone like him- calm and understanding. There is a golden mean here, and learning how to be more calming and understanding helps me find mine.
Probably the last two, though just as important, specific details about my life that, I feel, have helped make me a perfect fit for teaching would be my military career and my faith. Honestly and truly, I started out in my early life feeling so scared of everything and so unsure about myself as a person, but the military has a tendency to build you up and help you see what you’re capable of. It helps build up your weaknesses and add to your strengths and allows you to see that if you can overcome those kinds of things, you can also do this kind of thing. I am more self-confident now than I was before. My faith has done that as well because I feel that if God gave me this life and these professions, than I must have something special to give in return through them. I appreciate and trust that. My faith leads me and has never led me astray.
Suggestions/encouragement for new teachers: I think the only thing I can say is: Be OK making mistakes. Be OK being human in front of your students. It’s OK to fail because that, at least, means you’re trying and you’re learning to be what you’re supposed to be as a teacher. I can say that because I’m still struggling with it, and I notice how different things are when I’m OK with my human faults vs. when I try and be perfect all the time.