Looking Back: A Reflection on My Life as a Student

Autoethnography. A term I was not familiar with until a few short weeks ago. For class, I had to complete one, and it took one of my fellow classmates to put it into perspective for it to make any degree of sense.

A scrapbook.

Yep. This thing but school related.

More specifically, a scrapbook dedicated to my life as a student. The goal of the assignment was to reflect on past experiences a student in order to understand the type of teacher you are going to be. This is, largely, because what we experienced as a student molds our views on education and schools. I never put much thought into that, but then I realized that is really rather obvious and I just rarely considered the validity of that thought. But the reality is that I always said, “When I am teacher, I am going to do this and this because my favorite teachers did that and it worked for me.”

For the sake of this assignment, I focused primarily on my experiences as a high school student. I know many may say that college was the “best four years of my life” or speak to how influential college is for them, but for me it was high school that I credit for making me who I am today. This is not to say that I did not grow or be shaped by my experiences in college, as I did mature a great deal in those four years. But it was in high school where I started to become the person I am today.

The core idea of this autoethnography was to collect “artifacts” that shaped, reflect or relate to our experiences as individuals in democratic society, while connecting to education whenever possible. The basis of this assignment was to relate these artifacts to six domains: school, teachers/administrators, our friends/peers, the self, family and community. I had a great deal of trouble finding some, until a number of epiphanies hit me hard. High school yearbook, pictures, stories (with quotes from the classic “Billy Madison”) and my old soccer trophy (which I totally didn’t deserve) rounded out the items that guided this project.

Through this assignment, I learned a great deal about myself as a student and have a greater idea of the teacher I will become. As a student, I was told that education is important and that the more educated you are, the better potential you have to succeed. I was told that I had this potential since I was a child really, but was also told that the society I live in has hundreds of thousands opportunities before me, and it was up to me to find and take them. All I had to do was work hard, handle myself responsibly and then I can succeed. As a teacher, I aim to give my students these same life lessons and opportunities. I want them to be able to explore their options like I was able to and develop the skills and abilities to seize any opportunities that they see. That is what I feel is my job as an educator.