10 Sep A Glimpse into the Future: The next career steps
Hi everyone, I am back with another blog! For this blog I want to take a look through a wider lens, looking outside of just this present season and a glimpse into the future.
As I have repeated stated and implied through my updates this year, this season has been extremely formative for me in terms of my professional development and what I am wanting to do for my full time career after this experience. Through this season a large part of my job has been public facing, interacting with visitors of a variety of ages across the forest and at partnered sites. However, what has stood out the most in this regard has been the educational partnerships working with schools and summer camp programs to help lead educational stations and structured lessons with students. Working with students in a more structured but still interactive and engaging lesson plan has been where I have felt the most fulfilled.
I think this leads well into the plan for what I am wanting to pursue after this season…. Teaching! More specifically, I want to be a middle school science teacher working with student ranging from grade 6 to 8.
If you know me well this probably isn’t a surprise at all. From creating science activities to have kids do while babysitting, working summer camp jobs, and volunteering as an environmental educator, I have always just wanted to share more with others.
While during this season and over the last couple years I have been more focused on informal or outdoor education as well as field work, I have always been drawn to teaching and have been saying since high school that I feel like I will end up being a educator, which comes from my own positive experiences around the middle school age and how much it impacted my own drive to get to where I am today. That passion and spark my own teachers instilled in me at a young age has caused an almost pay it forward effect that has made me want to share and instill that passion in others while they are young and figuring out what sparks joy for them.
So now that I have established what the end goal is, you might be wondering ‘what are your next steps to get there?’. If I am being completely honest I still have to get that all ironed out. But tentatively, I want to try and get established as a substitute teacher and explore what teaching program would be best suited for myself to get my teaching license and potentially masters degree.
Until then, I still have some more things I want to explore and skills I want to develop outside of a traditional classroom setting in order to strengthen my background to be the best educator I can be. This includes possibly exploring more jobs in environmental education such as working at a zoo, aquarium, or science center. There are so many paths to get to where I want to be while still allowing more exploration into skills and various topics of knowledge to bring into my career later on.
Along with this, a need for stability is important to be able to reach my future goals, and sometimes that means an non linear path and dipping my toe into different skills sets and jobs to help bolster me along the way. Family and friends close to me know, throughout this whole season and prior to this season I have been working a second job that keeps me connected to my love of animals and has set me up to have a full time job following this season… Dog grooming!
It seems a little out of left field but it has been a job I have loved and I want to highlight in this post so you all can get a better glimpse of me in this moment and the stepping stones helping me into the next chapter of my life. I have been working in a pet salon for a little over a year and have been a dog groomer (or pet stylist as we say) for about 7 months. I adore this job not only because I get to work with the most adorable dogs but because it has helped me to develop a new level of patience and communication that varies from working with people but carries over well into people facing jobs like teaching. I have adored this role and I am excited to continue it after this season while I work on paving the path to my end goal career.
Until next time, enjoy some cute dog pictures :)
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