Why and How I Became a Teacher

It occurred to be recently that I probably have never shared with you the path of how I became a teacher. When I was a freshmen in college, I had no intention of becoming a teacher or to major in mathematics. In fact, my major for my first two years of college was Spanish. I cringe at all of the hours I wasted on something that I really wasn't super passionate about. I came very close to a Spanish minor but abandoned that pursuit to focus on math. It wasn't until the end of my sophomore year that I felt called to major in math and to enroll in the school of Education at Samford University. Even when I did this, I still was not 100% certain that I wanted to become a teacher. I can assure you though that all of my literature, science, and even Spanish courses were invaluable to me along the way. But it wasn't until I finished my core courses that I started to study content that I was really interested in. During my sophomore, junior, and senior years, I took a full slate of education and math courses. I took Calculus I, Calculus II, Calculus III, Vector Calculus, College Geometry, Discrete Mathematics, Statistics, College Algebra, Differential Equations, Numerical Analysis,and The Theory of Numbers(which was my favorite). Not all of these courses were easy but I must say that I found them all useful for what I get to do today. As I neared the end of my senior year, I was excited about graduation but I still had a semester of student teaching to do in a Birmingham middle and high school(split time). During the course of that summer, I received a call one day while I was teaching a camper how to knee board at Camp Vesper Point. This was a call from Samford informing me that there was a school in Birmingham that was desperate for a math teacher. Confused, I called my education professor to try and understand exactly what was going on here. Why would a school want to hire me when I hadn't even graduated yet? I was amazed and humbled to find out that he had recommended me to this school and he wanted me to call this school immediately to take the job. It was at that moment that I had to make a monumental, life-changing decision. Samford was willing to count my first semester of "real teaching" as my required semester of student teaching. Only a fool would turn such an offer down but I still had to pray about it. After I called the school and told them that I would think about it, I spent the next two days doing a lot of praying. I remember waking up at 5:00am the next morning to go and watch the sunrise. It was during that morning which was August of 1999 that I decided to take the leap of faith and become a teacher at John Carroll Catholic High School. Ironically, I had actually visited this school in 1998 as part of a required visit for one of my education classes. This decision turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever been led to make. I taught at John Carroll for three wonderful years. It was never easy but it was the perfect school for me to get some much needed experience. I taught Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Algebra I Honors, and Algebra II while I was there. I officially graduated from Samford in December of 1999 while I was grading exams. One of my students that year served as an usher at the ceremony in another ironic twist!
If any of you seniors are worried or confused as to what to do with your life, here is what I will tell you: Don't worry! God will eventually reveal his plan for your life to you in due time. All you have to do is remain faithful and He will take you down an exciting and sometimes uncertain path.
Over the past year, I have enjoyed reaching out and contacting some of my old students from John Carroll who are about to graduate college(some already have). In my next post, I will write about how God led me to CCS.
I have always been amazed when I look at the two schools that I have taught at. John Carroll is abbreviated "JCCHS". If you look closely within that abbreviation, you will see something very interesting.