I Believe - Role Models

I believe we all need positive role models in our lives. We need role models that find the good in us and guide us in channeling that good to make ourselves and our society a better place. In today’s day and age there is so much deceit, vulgarity, and disrespect. In turn, there is not enough patience, understanding, and tolerance. So you ask, where am I going with this?

Today before you I stand as a successful, accomplished, and strong woman. But it was not always the case. Back in my native Poland, my dad dropped me off in kindergarten one day and never returned. He tragically died in a car accident, that Friday, November 13, 1981. For the next year, my mother would drag me to his gravesite every day – whether it was day or night – we had to pay our daily visit. I was six at the time and the youngest of four; the eldest was my sister who was in her twenties and lived in the United States. My sister insisted we come for a visit – this was her way of pulling my mother away from the daily visits to the cemetery and the wasting away of her life; hence she and I immigrated to the US.

Here my mother worked two jobs; one in a factory and one as a cleaning lady. She was an educated woman, but since she did not know the English language, she had no choice but to take on menial work. Since she heard so many negative stories about public schools she worked day and night to make sure I attended a good private school. Eventually, however, it was time to move onto high school and the tuition for a private high school was too much for my mother to handle, thus for the first time I went into the public school system. At the time we lived in Passaic, an at-risk district. I was petrified of my first day at Passaic High, not knowing what to expect. But, I knew that my mother would want me to overcome my fears, make her proud by earning good grades, and pave the way for a better future for myself, and that is exactly what I did.

Many students around me could care less whether they completed their assignments or passed their tests. I, on the other hand, was not going to fall into that trap of failure because I had a great role model and I was not going to let her down. Additionally, I found that my teachers took an interest in me and when they complimented me on a job well done I also wanted to please them and so I would work even harder on the next assignment. Upon graduating high school, I attended Seton Hall and even did a study abroad in Oxford University. From there I went on to earn a Masters from Rutgers, and now I am at Montclair working towards a Supervisory Certificate. My journey is never ending. I manage to budget my time to be a good and caring fill in the blank – wife, mother of two, friend, colleague, teacher, professor, and student. Of course I could have fallen through the cracks, but I did not on account of the role models I had, especially of course my mother.

I became an educator because I believe my job affects the lives of my students. I have no shame in telling them my life story and including the part that I often helped my mom when she cleaned houses. When an ESL student says to me I think I will never master English, I say, if I could do it, so can you. Ironically today I am an English teacher and I use my position to be a role model for my students. I know I was lucky enough to have caring teachers and I want to give back what I have received. The bottom line is, whether you are a parent and/or a teacher, you are in a position that puts you in the spotlight for the youth of America to emulate; therefore you must be a positive role model, so many of our children and young adults need you!