My Childhood Essay

This I Believe – Whether I like it or not, my childhood shaped who I am today.
I have an accidental life. I am not supposed to be here talking to a room full of successful people let alone be one of them. My life’s design should have led me to poverty, addiction and being a victim of domestic violence.
I came into this world in August of 1973. I came into this world and entered a family of dysfunction. I was born into a two-parent household with one sister who is 3 years my senior. This should have been a “normal” childhood, but I soon discovered such a thing did not exist.
Most of my other childhood memories were very dark. They consisted of my alcoholic father choking, dragging or punching my mother on a regular bases. It was

As a child, I fought hard to hide my home life from friends and teachers. No one ever knew that I would often go home to an empty refrigerator or doing homework by candlelight. I reflect on this often when I deal with children. When a child is acting out, I know that their behavior is a form of communication and it is up to me to decipher what they are really trying to say. It may be a cry for help in some way and far be it from me to ignore this by addressing only the surface behavior. As I child, I wanted to badly to tell someone what was going on inside the walls of my home, but no one asked or showed the caring compassion I would have needed to open up about my experiences.
I truly believe this is what lead me to being a teacher and a leader. I had a need to make the lives of my students the best they can be. My goal at the start of every school-year, if nothing else, was to make my kids feel loved and safe. The students whose lives were similar to the one I experienced were especially close to my heart. I may not know exactly what they were facing when they reached home each evening, but I wanted to be sure their days were the best they could possibly be and they had someone who loved and cared for them and that nothing they could say or do would ever change