Kacey’s Kindergarten photo
As long as I can remember, school and education have been passions of mine. My older sister, Amber, would play “school” with me for fun. She’d help me with my reading, show me complex mathematics, teach me about animals, weather, and history. She’d even involve my parents as principals and she never forgot to have gym and recess. I loved playing school with her. It is some of my fondest memories from when we were small.
As I became older, I knew I wanted to work with children. I was a counselor at many different camps for various different children in my young adult life. When I finally got to Clark University, I found a passion in psychology. I especially loved the courses in developmental psychology. I scored an internship in a research lab with Professor Katherine Binder at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA. For two summers, I worked in their Psychology and Education Department conducting and transcribing interviews and coding data focused around language acquisition research. I then focused my collegiate research in this same area. I continued research in the development of language with children at Clark under Professor Elena Zaretsky. The research fascinated me. I loved learning about how people, adults and children, learn to read, speak, and identify a language. The data I reviewed showed me the intriguing way in which the mind learns and continues to learn new information and skills forever. Over this time, I took many educational courses at Clark as well to deepen my understandings and involvement with this interest in how people learn. I began to imagine myself as an educator, not a psychologist.
Kacey and the Sigmund Freud statue at Commencement 2019
Those courses required intense and frequent observational hours in local public school classrooms as well as academic readings and work. After observing in multiple classrooms around Worcester, I knew I wanted to become an educator. Watching third-graders at Woodland Academy, tutoring two first-graders at Jacob Hiatt, observing sixth-graders, the students in the upper-level STEP room (students with severe behavioral disabilities in grades 3-6), and following the School Adjustment Counselor and the School Psychologist at Columbus Park, showed me the array of opportunity to work in education. I knew teaching was my calling because I could influence young people in personal ways within the classroom and could see those “lightbulb” moments. I could guide them and observe their yearly growth and change. I could create my own classroom community where perseverance and failure motivate our collaborative successes. My love for learning and my fascination with helping others learn lead me right to this field.
When deciding upon furthering my career-path after undergraduate Clark, Clark’s MAT program was an incomparable fit. Having an opportunity to work in Worcester, the community which I have begun to shape my adult identity, and pursue my education was a no-brainer. Clark’s program values unpacking “urban education” and prepares its students to face the challenges teaching will bring in this context. Clark’s highly-rated MAT program would prepare me for my dream job. I am extremely fortunate to have had the experiences and opportunities in college that lead me to this position, and hopefully a career. The experiences in this program helped me develop my teaching practice and build a reflective, professional community which I will continue to utilize and grow as I move into my own classroom.