Education and background

Welcome back for week two! 

So this week I’m going to talk about why i choose to become a student at Purdue Fort Wayne and a little about my schooling back ground along with my decision to become a teacher. 

So first off as i said in my previous blog i was born in Columbia City. I started elementary school at Little Turtle Elementary School as one of the first kindergarten classes there. Pretty cool right? Anyways I went there until third grade or about a month of third grade anyways before moving to a small town in New York State. My mom was born in this small town and went to school at Westfield Academy and Center School until she was in sixth or seventh grade and then her and my grandparents moved to Churubusco Indiana. The reason we moved back to my moms hometown was because a few years prior to us moving my grandpa passed away because of a massive heart attack so naturally my mom wanted to be with her dads family. We moved to Westfield in September of my third grade year a week before they started school and i got one of the best third grade teachers, Mr. Putney. We lived in Westfield until i was in fifth grade and then we moved to West Virginia in the middle of my fifth grade year, at the end of the school year we made our way back to Indiana for the summer and then went back to Westfield where we stayed until my seventh grade year. In the middle of my seventh grade year we moved back to West Virginia again this time planning to stay but then my grandma got sick causing us to move back to Columbia City. I finished middle school at Indian Springs Middle School and then moved on to Eagle Tech, Columbia City’s tech high school. It was awesome full circle started school in Columbia and was going to graduate in Columbia City, odd how the world works. Unfortunately that’s not what happened my grandma ended up getting better and sold her house causing my family to move yet again and we moved to Pierceton were my sisters and I started going to Whitko. I was a freshman in High school at this time and it was totally not cool to move to a new high school but nothing i could do. I hated it at Whitko no real reason why i just did so no matter what I wanted to go to Churubusco High School and graduate where my mom and godmother graduated from but things were not looking like it was going to pan out that way until my junior year of high school. The summer before my junior year we moved to Churubusco, the final school i would go to before college. Moving around to all these schools helped me choose Purdue Fort Wayne as my college and here’s how:

Growing up i went to all small schools so i was use to small classes sizes and i felt i learned better in them and Purdue Fort Wayne has small class sizes. Purdue Fort Wayne was also both close and far from my hometown if you will so i didn’t have to live on campus with a stranger but I still could get the sense of college life. My senior year of high school I originally was only going to apply for one college and that was Ball State. Ball state was my dream college and I really wanted to go there to be a music teacher. My junior year my parents and I went and visited Ball State and they had an amazing campus i liked it even though we got lost. Ball state had a really good teaching program too so i was excited. Well my senior year i was told by lots of people that Ball State was way expensive, and they were right, but they also told me that i needed other options in case Ball State didn’t accept me. With that being said I along with my best friend went and visited Saint Francis and both applied there, they had a good music program but no education program and if they did it wasn’t very good. Upon applying for those two schools i decided that applying to IPFW was a good idea because they were close cheap and had both a really good music program and a good education program so i ended up apply at IPFW with one of my other friends. The forth and final school I applied to was Ivy Tech as somewhat of a joke and a back up plan just in case my SAT scores were bad and none of the other schools accepted me. I really suck at math so i have doubts that Ball State, Saint Francis, and IPFW would accept me. To my surprise in December and January i got three acceptance letters one from Saint Francis, one from Ivy Tech, and one from IPFW i was happy that taking the SAT three times paid off but i was upset because i hadnt gotten anything from Ball State at this point but it is what it is right? Finally i got something in the mail from Ball State saying i needed an audition to get into the music school and the same was true for IPFW so i practiced my butt off and had my audition for IPFW first and failed so i canceled my audition at Ball State figured if i couldn’t get into the music program at IPFW a smaller school that Ball State then i wasn’t going to get in there. Now it was down to the three schools i was fully accepted into and i decided that Saint Francis wasn’t the school for me because i knew no matter what i wanted to be a teacher. By May it was down to going to school with one of my friends at Ivy tech or going to IPFW with one of my other friends and i choose IPFW. My friend and I came to campus for the first time a couple weeks after prom to take our placement tests and i instantly fell in love with the school. It was way smaller that Ball State so i wasn’t going to get lost and it was a fifteen to twenty minute drive from home i was hitting gold. After graduation my parents and I came to campus to pick out classes and they too were happy with IPFW over Ball State probably because it was cheaper and i wouldn’t be leaving to go to school but we may never know. 

So I’ve had many great teachers in my life and a few of them have made me want to become a teacher. First my third grade teacher Mr. Putney, i use to be super shy and because of him i am not longer as shy as i was. He helped me become the person i am today and by that i mean him playfully picking on me in class saying things like “Novella stop taking” and confusing the entire class because i wasn’t talking but he was saying things like that so i would smile. In sixth grade i would go to Mr. Putney’s class and help him grade papers and what not while the elementary finished out the school day. The middle school and high school got out at 2:30 and the elementary got out at 3:15 and the buildings were all connected. He made me want to be a teacher because i liked helping people and i want to help kids that maybe be a little shy like myself. In high school it was my English teacher Mr. Brisco and my choir teacher Mr. Childress that had me choosing if i wanted to be an English teacher or a choir/ music teacher. I love music and English just the same but after not making it into the music program or even into show choir i gave up the music dream all together and i regret it sometimes but i really enjoy the English. The English to me makes more sense because growing up i have always struggled with reading comprehension so i decided that becoming an English teacher would both challenge me and let me help other students who might also struggle with comprehension.