Scholarship Essay Entry – Candace P.

My dream of making my community and my world a better place lies down the road of becoming a high school Computing Science and Math teacher. Other adults raise their eyebrows and tell me I am brave for wanting to teach high school. I surmise that their responses are because high school students often seem apathetic about school, and they aren't even cute. They are smelly too and they talk back when they are told what to do. I want to be a high school teacher because I know that high school students need unconditional love and encouragement, just like other students. I know that unconditional love is challenging to give, but I also know that I am up for the challenge, because love should not have to be earned, and because I know both what conditional and unconditional love feels like. I want my students to know they are loved unconditionally, because I believe that being loved unconditionally is a great motivator. I want to create a high school environment where students are as excited and motivated to learn as kindergarten students. I want to teach Computing Science, because helping students understand how a computer program works alleviates some of the shallowing effects of the information overload in our lives. Computing Science also involves studying the effects of technology, and the reasons that we want everything in our lives to be brief and entertaining (if not brief, at least entertaining). I want to help students develop depth: of knowledge and of character. I want to teach math, because I understand math, and I understand some of the reasons students have trouble with math. Indeed, I am most anticipating the students who have no confidence in their own understanding of math and no patience for math, because I believe I can instill that missing confidence and that lacking patience.

I believe that creating learners who know they are loved, learners who have depth, and learners who have confidence will create a better community in Lacombe, AB, and that these learners will, in turn, create a better world.