Claudia Evelyn Gonzalez

First, I attribute my success to my mother for being the beacon of my passion to pursue a career as an English as a second language teacher. She has had limited English proficiency and helping her learn English with unrelenting attention and patience became the powerful impetus of wanting to help others who do not speak English or have limited English skills. In fact, my Spanish skills had considerably improved as a result of working with my mother. Gaining this entrancing skill had enabled my success in working with emergent bilingual children and school staff for ten years in the education field including substitute teaching. More importantly, working with my mother, emergent bilingual children and adults, and embarking on my graduate studies of applied linguistics and bicultural-bilingual studies had increasingly shaped my fruition of appreciating learning about both languages and hopefully conduct field research in that field. Second, I attribute my success to my former colleagues at Masters Elementary at Judson ISD, where I worked during the past five years. They have definitely been very thoughtfully resolute and willing to provide me with as much support as they could, so I could thrive, especially throughout my first-year teaching kindergarten and up to the very present day. Without the laudable and unwavering love and support from my former fellow colleagues and supervisors, I would not have thought that I could have thrived and gained sharper and more refined understanding working with young children. Thereby, it has been eminently important to have that cogent elucidation that children desperately need to be heeded so they can definitely thrive in all areas of their development and satisfactorily reach my academic and behavioral expectations with rigor. As a result of constantly leading a great kindergarten class throughout the first four years at Masters Elementary, my former principal and a couple of my former colleagues attended my Educator of the Year ceremony last year. As a result, I largely paid tribute to them on my LinkedIn profile.

The best career advice I received was from one of my former colleagues who mentioned to me that “I must work smarter rather than harder”. This cogent statement has enabled me to grow professionally over the past six years as an educator. When I am faced with multiple tasks, I prioritize them in order of importance. For instance, the most important task that has the nearest deadline would be fulfilled first. Then, I would address all the other less important tasks that have a further deadline at the very end. Second, I used to work up to 60 hours a week at my former teaching job which caused a lot of burnouts. However, I reached a goal set with my former supervisor to leave no later than 4:45pm during the last two years. Thus, whatever tasks that I did not complete at my workplace, I would finish them at home. I wanted to create more of a work-life balance, and that was the greatest advice that had resonated with me, and I wanted to start implementing. I wanted to be the best that I could be for my students and other staff members, and to instill more of a favorable learning environment. It all starts with my behavior and how I model it in front of the students. By taking care of myself first, that work-life balance is extremely essential to enjoy the work that I did and to become one of the students’ valued recourses throughout their compulsory education!

A proverb that has resonated with me sharply from the past six years in my career as an educator was that "it takes a village to raise a child". My advice for anyone in the profession involving working with children has been not to address and redress issues of varying degrees in working with children alone. They must not shape young minds without losing your own. Albeit these professionals should always seek advice and support as much as needed from colleagues, supervisors, former teachers, or any educational specialists who have profound knowledge in their area of expertise. Have them share their expertise and form networks, because it pays a large dividend for anyone who wants to excel in their profession. Third, parents must be a prominent benefactor for shaping their childrens' education. Here, I would strongly advise young women to frequently collaborate with all families, create, and maintain a portfolio of communications taking place to and from families and supervisors, along with childrens' work samples. The importance of frequently tracking these bidirectional collaborations amongst every stakeholder is that they instantly serve as essential evidence that sharply compels administrators and families that educators are attempting to provide ceaseless support when children are not making any academic and behavioral progress. That way, in case if educators need to attend ARD meetings or any kind of meetings for families and children, they could be more supported rather than reprimanded if they provided concrete evidence of support for children on their end, especially if a child receives special education or 504 services. I have always used the term, stakeholders for the adults that were responsible for nurturing children throughout various contexts as each individual equally shares the stakes in childrens' overall well-being. Hence, in short, my advice for young women educators would be that it "definitely takes an entire village of stakeholders to ensure that every child succeeds beyond the classroom".

The biggest challenge that I faced was how to balance multiple tasks without feeling the burnout, maintaining sanity and composure, and seeking composure whenever you need it. One strategy of guaranteeing composure during the last five years that I have taught kindergarten was to take a moment to vent our frustration. I would try to model the expected behavior of the students. When they feel sad or upset by any means, I had children to take a moment, for example spending up to five minutes in the calming corner, or a prearranged cooling station. Thus, the calming corner is where children feel safe and appreciated with a sense of belonging. When they feel sad or upset, I had them sit out where they may use comforting and sensory toys or activities to alleviate their frustration. Upon five minutes in the calming corner, children would come back into the learning community in the classroom and engage with more confidence, which has helped a lot. I think the strategy of creating and having the students use the calming corner has been one of my challenges, dealing with young children who were very emotionally challenged, especially in the classroom with 20+ students every day, every year. I also went over as a class on how to address any frustration with a multitude of coping strategies, and how to make sure that they were effective. The efficacy of calming strategies was measured by how much children could remain calm and focused throughout the instructional day. Furthermore, I made sure that children had outlets like recess and time off from the academics for them to undergo any unstructured activities, since those would foster their short-term working attention spans and memories. In conclusion, childrens' behaviors, my burnouts, and how to manage them were definitely one of my biggest challenges; however, classroom management was an area where I had shown growth.

My most touching values in my work and personal life are nonstop mutual collaboration, a cornucopia of love, understanding, total respect, responsibility, sense of belonging, and also being goal oriented. Those are my strongest values that have sharply resonated with me during the past six years, along with wanting to receive constructive feedback vehemently highlighting my strengths. When mentioning about areas where I would need growth, I prefer them to be stated in a mitigating tone that would not mar my self-esteem.