Teaching is a very noble profession that everyone pictures themselves doing as a child, but few actually go through with. An unfortunate truth for this profession is that not a lot of people want to do it and it truly impacts us all. For those of us who have held on to our childhood dreams of having our own Pinterest worthy classroom and our own students, we could not be more excited to make this dream a reality.

Our excitement is rare in today's society and the explanation for that is because of the pay teachers make in America. Yes, we do understand that they pay for teachers isn't exactly where it should be. Does that change our mind? Clearly not if we are still pursuing this career path after we've experienced it ourselves and been told hundreds and hundreds of times about what our future entails.

For a lot of us, we grew up with parents that taught. I don't want to look at this as the deciding factor in why I chose my major/future career, however, spending summers with my mom as she decorated her classroom and long nights at the baseball field as my dad coached could definitely be part of the reason why I fell love with the idea of teaching.

Along with a lot of the other declared and certain education majors, I also enjoyed working with kids throughout my life. From being a safety patrol back in elementary school to being a tutor in middle school, to becoming a cheer coach and a camp counselor in high school, I knew from a young age teaching would be the only thing that I could see myself doing. Even now in college, I am still a camp counselor and a cheerleading coach at a local middle school. In addition, I worked with a local high school, as part of Dance Marathon at FSU, to help them put on their very own dance marathon to raise money for sick and injured kids in addition to raising over $2,100 for Children's Miracle Network.

Everyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I have always loved and had a passion for working with kids and I do not plan to give that up any time soon. The constant discouragement from the media, nay-sayers, and the less than adequate pay/treatment from students and parents can be scary, but any future educator can tell you that it just fuels their fire to change the “norms" in the American public education system. The best part about being a future educator is that you have the biggest spark and strong desire to make a change to the system that many believe is 'broken' or 'struggling.'

We are in it for our future students. We are in it to be the change we wish to see in the world. We are in it to teach in and out of the classroom -and we can't wait.