Welcome to the blog post that finally explains how the heck I went from being a journalism major to a special education teacher that is now pursuing BCBA.
We have to go all the way back to my junior year of high school. I had been around kids a lot growing up. I volunteered for the summer reading program at the library for years. I had worked as a volunteer at Girl Scout camp. I was pretty sure I wanted to work with kids in my future and the obvious choice was to be a teacher
I joined Future Educators of America in high school. In my district, elementary school started at 7:30 in the morning and High School did not start until nine. I was able to go volunteer in my old first grade teacher’s classroom for the first 45 minutes of the day and then head over to school myself. While I greatly enjoyed the experience, I was not sure if working in an elementary setting, particularly with kids that young was what I wanted to do.
My senior year of high school I joined the Teacher Cadet program. In this program you paired with a local university to take an intro to education class. You took the class the first semester and then the second semester you were placed in a class to do a pseudo-student teaching.
For that program, I got placed in my eighth grade English teacher’s class. Again I really enjoyed the experience but I also knew that working at the middle school was not for me. I spent a lot of time talking with the teacher and she was the one that suggested special education. When I explained what I liked, she thought that might be a good fit.
I decided to go ahead and pursue majoring in special education. My dream school was James Madison University in Virginia. It was the school my older brother was attending and I fell in love with the special education program there. Needless to say it was absolutely devastating when I did not get in. I was not a strong student in high school and it was a slim chance but I still took it really hard. I eventually decided to go to Longwood University instead. It is a small college in Virginia known for its education program
There are a couple of important things to know about my first semester at Longwood. The first one being I had that homesickness. You know, the one where it’s October and you’re still sobbing in your dorm room because you’re missing home so much and it’s impacting your ability to adjust to your new environment? That was me. That pair with the fact that I struggle significantly to make friends because I am pretty shy and I was struggling in classes because I still was not a strong student made me feel very alone.
My mom recommended I try and join a club. I decided to go out for the student newspaper. I had worked on my student newspaper in high school and I was a pretty strong writer and I thought that would be a good club because it was something that I was interested in. I joined and I started making some friends. I still have my sights on transferring to James Madison University but when I went for a visit with an admissions counselor it became pretty clear that there was no way I was going to be able to transfer.
At that point I really didn’t know what to do. I had a couple friends but not strong ones. I was still struggling in my classes. I was just genuinely unhappy and I ultimately decided to drop out of the special education program. It’s hard for me to look back at that moment because sometimes I feel a lot of regret for the decision I made but I also recognize that some of the decisions I made after that put me on the path I need to be on.
I spent the rest of spring semester just finishing up some freshman requirements and figuring out what I was going to do. Funny enough I actually met my husband doing a newspaper interview at the time and we ended spring semester with myself being elected as the news editor of my college newspaper and him being elected my assistant.
I went back for the start of my sophomore year diving headfirst into the world of journalism. It was the one thing I was excelling at and I started making a lot of friends . I switched my degree to communications degree with a mass media degree concentration. Corey and I end up dating and I went on to be elected the editor in chief of my college newspaper, position I had for two years. I spent the rest of my time at college preparing to be a journalist.
Until halfway through senior year. When I truly look at a career as a journalist, I knew I didn’t want it. But I was in a really tough spot. Corey and all of my friends only knew me as a journalist. I had walked away from the degree that I wanted and I was about to graduate with a different one. I remember feeling so much panic about what I was supposed to do.
This will seem off topic but it is relevant. I had used a website called care.com to find babysitting jobs when I was on break from college. Because I had been a special education major and I was comfortable with children with special-needs I indicated that on my profile. Over winter break of my senior year I got hired to babysit a 10-year-old with significant physical disabilities. I only babysat him about three times over those two weeks but that really reaffirmed that I might’ve made a mistake.
I didn’t know what to do so I just pushed forward. I graduated in May 2012 and right out of college I got hired at a job that was totally the wrong job for me. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to be working with children with special needs and here I was with a degree in journalism and a résumé that only showed internships and experience writing articles.
Sorry to be so so cheesy but this is the point in my story where my parents are truly the shining stars. I remember sitting on their couch that summer hysterically crying and my mom just kept saying what is wrong? what can we do? and I finally found the courage to tell them I need a huge mistake and they looked at me and they said it’s OK what can we do now? They completely accepted what I was saying and we jumped headfirst into figuring out how to fix it. Luckily I got hired to be a teaching assistant in a special-education classroom in a High School. My mom told me to do this for a year while I figured out how to get back on the right track.
I start that position and I quickly learned that there was an option to do a Masters program in Special Education that will give you a licensure component. I enroll in University of Phoenix and took a Master level intro to special education class just to get the ball rolling and I submit that as part of my application to a local university. I got accepted and began my masters in special education in January 2013.
Remember Corey, the one who met me as the girl he was going to be a newspaper reporter? I was really going back to my original plan but he didn’t know about it. Luckily my husband is the most chill guy you’ll ever meet and he’s like OK cool. I took the first two classes and took my first test for state liscesure while I finished the year as a TA in a high school. Technically speaking, I had met the requirements to get a provisional teaching license in my state, but you have to have an actual teaching job offer to get that.
I wanted to be a teacher but I knew last thing I could do was to keep getting experience in the field. That summer I got hired to be a teaching assistant in an ESY setting. They had a desperate shortage of teachers, however, so I remember being in a meeting and they said does anybody have the qualifications to be a professional teacher? I did. I Within an hour they have been signing paperwork and I got my breakthrough-I was hired to be the self-contained teacher for her autism program grades K to two for four weeks that summer.
Because I had a job offer, I qualified for a provisional teaching license. I could start teaching, I just had to complete my licensure program and pass all of the tests within three years. This made it easier me to get hired in the fall. I ended up getting hired to open a brand new autism program grades 3 to 5 in a new elementary school.
I started teaching that class in August 2013. Corey and I rented an apartment together and I continued working on my masters. It was in that masters program that I took my one and only behavior class. I loved the class. I excelled at it. I learned about something called a graduate certificate in applied behavior analysis. It was too late for me to add it onto my masters so I told Corey as soon as I graduated I wanted to start it and work towards BCBA. Again, super chill guy and he’s like cool do it.
I graduate with my masters degree in special education and earn my complete teaching license in May 2015. I start the graduate certificate in applied behavior analysis in June. And let me tell you, the classes were hard. Like I explained at the beginning of the podcast, I was not a strong student. I did really well in my masters program so it shocked me that I was struggling so much in the certificate program. I took the first two of the six classes and then I take a semester off. My husband and I got married in April 2016 so I didn’t want to be in school that semester. I also went through a really tough time at work. If you haven’t listen to episode eight of the podcast called why I left the classroom, that will give you background. I pulled out of that situation, I took the third class in the ABA course sequence and then I abandoned the dream of becoming a BCBA at the end of 2016.
I decide to finish the last three courses of the certificate, only because my district would give you a pay increase if you had a masters +15 graduate level classes. I finished the certificate in fall 2017 thinking it would go nowhere. I continued teaching (by the way picking up another graduate certificate in adapted curriculum along the way because at the end of the day I am a really poor student who really loves to learn and I just keep getting degrees).
It wasn’t until my last year of teaching, fall of 2018, that I met the BCBA that I now work for. A future episode will detail my break in the path to BCBA even more but long story short I got really interested in her center and I left the classroom to go work with her in June 2019. In March 2020 I finally decided that I was ready to pursue BCBA again and that brings us to now.
February 2021. I’m just a couple months away from finally finishing that dream I’ve had since 2015. I hope this podcast helps you understand a little bit more how on earth I got to where I’m at now. It was a weird journey but I’m glad I took it. I absolutely know that my degree in journalism help me feel a lot more confident in writing my blog and a podcast, and I love the idea of doing future research in my field. Plus, another cheesy moment but there’s no way I would’ve met my husband if I hadn’t taken that path so although there’s a lot I would change, there’s parts I am grateful for as well.