Personal+Desires+with+Teaching

Getting Started: Setting Personal Goals Brittney Quirk

Nevada State College - Fall 2011 Instructor: Karen Powell

 Greetings! My name is Brittney Quirk and I am one of the lucky few who have the blessing to call themselves a true native of this beautiful city of Las Vegas, Nevada. Twenty three years, one week and one day ago, I entered this world. My mother jokes that she knew my personality from the day of my birth, stubborn, no sense of direction and not a morning person! My poor mother was in labor with me for 30 hours before I decided to stop lying sidewise and come out at 8pm.  St. Christopher’s Catholic school held me captive for nine years, during which time I attended speech therapy kindergarten through the third grade. To this day I still cannot wear plaid! For high school I attended Rancho High school Medical Academy with a major in emergency medicine and pharmacology were I attained the training for both fields and came out with my EMT-Basic certification. Since then I have attended five different colleges trying to figure out where and what I want to be. Finally the search is over with Nevada State and a major of speech pathology! In addition to the many colleges I also served two years with NET Ministries doing missionary work around the United States, it was during this time that I finally was able to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.  I am very excited for this semester and especially for my education and speech pathology classes, it is nice to be done with generals and finally feel like I am advancing towards my future career! Lesson plans, long term classroom and student growth, and the basics of reading comprehension are just a few of the areas that I am so excited to learn about during this class! I have lead tons of youth in different settings, but never anything long term. Nor have I had to come up with my own lesson plans, even now working for Gymboree play and music my lesson plans are premade by corporate. I am excited to learn how to help my students to continue to achieve higher and grow in knowledge, and to learn and grow with them!

The years of kindergarten through third grade hold a special place in my heart, from the beautiful teachers, whom I still keep in contact with, and the friendships I made that continue to flourish, but most of all the ability and confidence to communicate effectively. As I stated above it was during these four years that I attended speech therapy. Three times a week my “buddy” whom was an upper classmen would walk me across the street to the public school where I attended my sessions. As a child I was plagued with painful ear infections that caused delays in my speech, specifically in correct pronunciation of such sounds as the “r” sound. It wasn’t until the end of my third grade year that my aunt was no longer Aunt Woofy, but Aunt Ruthie.  In addition to attending speech therapy and working on my reading skills with my therapist, in class we had story time during kindergarten and first grade, and the buddy reading program first through fourth grade. A chosen few of us would be assigned as a “reading buddy” for a student in a younger class. It was our job to not only read to them but to there to help them along as they read as well. I believe this buddy program not only instilled within me the confidence to read, but a love of reading. In regards to how comfortable I am with teaching the subjects of reading and writing, I can honestly say I am a whole lot more comfortable with teaching reading over writing, although the thought of having to teach either scares me! I have helped my little cousins learn how to read, but that is only by sitting there with them and a book and helping them sound out the words. Besides that I am at a complete loss of how to teach youth how to read. This is one of the main reasons I decided to take this class! I am very excited to learn these skills that will enable me to become the best speech language pathologist I can be.