Introduction. Who am I?

Elie Ortiz
Sep 5, 2018 · 2 min read

Hello. My name is Elienid Ortiz and I am a student who is in the process of pursuing her dream job as an elementary school teacher. But most importantly, I am proud mother of a little boy named Josiah Gabriel who inspires and motivates me to be the best mother and educator I could be. I live in Milwaukee, WI, but was born in a beautiful island named Puerto Rico. As I was growing up, all of my family members noticed my passion for teaching. I often found myself teaching the alphabet to my teddy bears in Spanish. That’s when I realized, “I love teaching. This is what I want to do in life. I want to be a Spanish teacher.”

My social studies experience was not a terrible one, but it also wasn’t the greatest. Most of my social studies teachers went off lecture-based lessons, and I truly found it to be boring. One of the few non-lecture lessons I remember doing in that classroom, was splitting up the entire class in half and having academic debates over an assigned topic. I had an accent, as I was still learning the English language, and those debates were terrifying. My teacher would call out those students who weren’t saying much. I know. How crucial for a little shy 10-year-old, right? The more we did the debates, the more I started disliking the subject. I never felt comfortable in a social studies classroom, and sad to say that’s how I also felt in high school. Because of my not so great experience in elementary school, I never appreciated social studies in the upper grades. However, this negative experience taught me what kind of teacher I do NOT want to be. As a teacher, I want to be passionate about all subject areas and give my students the best learning experience they could receive. That is, not pressuring them into uncomfortable situations and going beyond those textbook lectures. Students should be able to go out in the real world and experience social studies in their community. Of course, we can’t go back into the World Wars, but they can learn about different peoples and their cultures and much more. Students should be able to relate what they learn in school to their everyday lives.

I aspire to be a great educator in a classroom where all of my students could feel comfortable and motivated to learn regardless of ethnicity/race, language, SES, and/or religious beliefs. My classroom will be the “safe zone”.