Evan Borgman Educational History Education is a topic that always manages to be a hot button, more so for the present

company. Everyone has their own views on what constitutes the proper education, and that view is bound to be very different than the view of pretty much anyone else you ask. Objectivity doesn't really exist in this field. Even though there might be a few proven forms of education that work very well there's no onesize-fits-all answer to the problem of teaching. That all being said, I think I managed to be raised in a household with the closest thing to the standard view that our education system can pull off. My family always put education in high regards. From the very earliest ages I was taught that I need to go to college, I need to get good grades, I need to be educated. There was no attempt to open me and my brother up to the meager alternatives to getting a good formal education. Granted, there aren't that many options open for some one besides going to college and getting a degree, but even those few (mostly militant) options were completely held away from us. To say that it was an important aspect of my rearing would be an understatement. Neither of my parents went to college. Their parents before them never went to college. Of my myriad of aunts and uncles I can hardly think of one that managed to get a college education (granted I can hardly remember the names of any more than one). My family has no history of higher education. The burden of success was put on myself and my brother from a very young age, as I grew up surrounded by the consequences of no pushing one's self. A good education leads to a good job, which leads to good pay, which leads to a good life, which leads to a good life for your kids. That's how its always been for me and that's how it always will be. I still have trouble with the idea of friends of mine joining the military or getting into fields that don't require formal education. Some things don't work out just the way you'd think. I had the right mindset, I had the right opportunities, I had the right capacity, but I never really applied myself to my learning. It always seemed like the most important thing in my life, and still does, but I always managed to find some way

to put off my work or something similar. Grades never managed to get as high as my friends and family came to expect. I was smart, still am I'd hope, and that's what I was always told. In retrospect that might have caused some of my problems with focus. Who needs to study, do homework or finish projects on time when all my teachers and friends all say I'm so smart? Compliments kind of suck. I was put into pre-school early. Not that pre-school is an incredibly important part of one's life, but I was deemed fit to start kindergarten a bit early. I didn't, instead my parents put me through the pre-school program again and put me into the Williamston public school system at the ripe young age of five. In another bit of afterthought, that seems a bit early. I've always been on the younger side of my classes, in fact I think there were only a handful of people in my graduating class younger than myself. Elementary school was pretty simple, nothing much happened. I joined cub scouts, and that was pretty boring. I only really stayed in because of stories of my older brother in the boy scouts. I have a feeling that joining up with them has something to do with my hatred of long, arbitrary and drawn-out meetings. I also learned that being around people that know your older brother is kind of awful, a reoccurring theme that would follow me throughout most of my younger years. I can't really say that there was much of anything that was particularly interesting about this time of my life. Elementary school gave in to middle school and not nearly as much changed in my life as people had told me would. I joined the school's band, but that didn't really do much for me. I stayed in the band for all three years, but a combination of a teacher who was quite intent that I was the devil and a lack of enthusiasm prevented me from joining the high school band. Well, a lack of enthusiasm and being told by the instructor that I was forbidden to join the high school band because I talked too much. In middle school I also managed to cross over into boy scouts. It was just as much fun as my brother made it out to be. This also had a bit more importance in my future life, as I got my first paying job through the BSA and that's ultimately what made me want to become a teacher, but I'm getting ahead of myself. This is also where my grades started to slip off. I had a lot of trouble with math, to the point of needing a tutor, but the other subjects were just so easy for me. It almost felt like things were too easy.

This is where the school faculty started pelting me with accusations of being intelligent. How dare they? As stated before, a combination of ease of work and the encouraging words of my superiors brought out supreme feelings of apathy that killed my grades and started some really bad habits for me in the long run. High school started off to little fanfare. Again, people said things would be totally different. They weren't. Same old classes, same old people, same old habits. My first two years went pretty poorly with me. My apathy skyrocketed, and when put into several classes too easy for myself I simply didn't do any of the work. And so I made the crowning achievement of my life, failing freshman health class. With a few other poor grades I was quite aware that I had screwed over my whole high school career by the end of my sophomore year. So I decided to play it safe with my junior year, even giving up my dream of becoming a programmer and taking the capital area career center course on the topic. Granted, the next year I decided that was bollocks and I was taking things far too easy and took it anyway. I also managed to learn that I hated the corporate environment and no matter how fun programming was I could never do it as a career. Scratch that one off the list. Grades rapidly improved in the second half of high school. Granted, the divorce of my parents and the death of a friend of mine had me pretty depressed for the most of that time but that never managed to kill my grades. They merely circled the drain instead of going down it. During the summer between high school and the start of my college career I was convinced I would go into the computer sciences. As the summer came to a close and the semester came to a start I realized that idea was totally bollocks and decided to look for a new major. At first anthropology seemed like it was my cup of tea. Then I took a class on anthropology and realized that there was next to no job market in that field. I could either sit on my degree for twenty years until an anthropology professor is needed in some university or work as a corporate consultant and completely ignore the ethical guidelines I was taught. At that point I completely gave up on trying to find a field that would pull in the big bucks and still make me happy in the long run and decided to focus on the later of those

two qualifications. That's lead me to my current predicament, perspective education major Evan Borgman. I like the sound of that. My experiences in scouting helped to create the biggest foundation for my interest in a career in education. Scouting was never something I took to terribly serious. My brother was an eagle scout, my brother was the SPL, my brother was the chief of our OA lodge, but I was just content sitting around talking with friends and camping. I spent many a weekend driving around the Lansing area going to various camps and meet-ups and met a lot of people that I'd later call good friends of mine. By knowing some of these people I even managed to get a job in the council's (local organizational subdivision thing) residential summer-camp as a councilor. I went up the summer of my freshman year as a councilor-in-training and learned how much I loved it. I came up as a volunteer councilor the summer of my junior year and learned just how much I love teacher. I came up the summer of my senior year of high school and figured I might be able to do this as a living. It was just a thought in the back of my mind back then really. While working up at camp Northwoods I met several professional teachers, several professional teachers that I could talk to as equals and not as a student. In the long run this is something that's helped grow my interest in becoming a teacher myself. Talking to these people and seeing them day in and day out for months really drove it into me what kind of people made good teachers. I thought back to the teachers that I'd had good experiences with. If I were to look back at the teachers that really hammered the information into my brain I chiefly think of one of my favorite teachers from high school. US history teacher, Mrs. Potter, managed to be my favorite teacher in high school. She talked quickly, jumped around from topic to topic and always managed to tie it back to the original subject in the end. That and she was a generally fun and enthusiastic person. Exactly the kind of thing I wanted in a teacher, and exactly the kind of thing I want to be as a teacher. She had a few habits that I tried to emulate and make my own when I was working as a councilor, which I think I managed to pull of quite well. She has a way of going on long tangents

about subjects, something I see a lot in the many teachers and professors I've had over the years, but she seems to make those tangents her main method of teaching. Handouts and visuals were important, but they seemed more like a method of anchoring the teacher to the topic instead of the other way around. Granted what was taught rarely had much to do with what was on the various handouts we were peppered with. Most of the teaching was done by word of mouth and with various things drawn in the spur of the moment on the white board. A very visual and active type of teaching, something that worked well with me as I'm a very visual and active learner. I've always been the kind of person that needs to be truly engaged by something for it to keep my attention. This has changed a bit, since I'm paying for my classes now and can't afford to slack off, but its still the way I learn best. I like to have teachers that talk directly to the students and try and open a conversation with them. The occasional joke made with a student, calling a student up to speak their mind on the topic, really engaging teaching has always helped keep my limited attention. As I've said earlier in this paper, this is the kind of teaching I'd like to provide. I've always considered using one's self as the best way to test something. If you can't understand it, or you aren't interested in it, then how do you expect some one else to care? All this leads me back to right now. A sum of all my parts, this is my meager history as a student and my hopes for a future as a teacher. Education is something that's always been incredibly important to my life, so the thought of passing it on to some one else just fills me with joy. Even though this is a monumental decision and my educational career is just in its infancy I'm very excited about my future. I can't wait to get started in the field.