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Instructional & Learning Processes: Secondary

Bio Resume

J. Steve Higgs

Crandall University

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  In the summer of 2008, I began working with a non-profit organization called The

 African Children’s Choir . The organization, founded in 1984, began with a mission to provide

the means to a holistic education to Africa’s most vulnerable children. At the time, my intention

in taking the job was to take one year to gain some travel experience while simultaneously

investing in the lives of children from Uganda. Little did I know that this one year opportunity

would turn into a three year journey around the world where I would experience firsthand the positive impact of education on families in impoverished East African communities. Throughout

this season I was exposed to the power and potential of education to break the cycles of poverty

which are pervading many regions in our world. It was here I first began to realize that teaching

 provides an opportunity to instil in upcoming generations such virtues as empathy, compassion

and justice. I also became deeply aware that through education students are able to grow up with

the knowledge and abilities needed to provide for themselves, for their families, and for their

communities.

While working and traveling the globe with the organization, I was given the opportunity

to help teach the children using the Ugandan school curriculum. Initially, this was a task I felt

incapable of performing. Until then I had essentially no experience with teaching. At the end of

my first day of lessons, however, I realized two things: First, I realized that teaching children

came relatively naturally to me. I seemed to do well at it and the students in my classroom

seemed to grasp the concepts I was introducing. Thus, I experienced high levels of success and

excitement in my teaching, which prompted me to pursue a career in the field. Second, I realized

that sitting in those chairs were students, most of them orphans, who were hungry to learn. Back

home in Uganda their families were living in poverty, hoping that the education we were

 providing for their children would in turn bring about a high quality of sustainable living forfuture generations. Education meant hope for these children and their families, and it was

towards this hope I set my sights as I returned home with the goal of obtaining a degree in

education.

Upon my return home, my perspective of children and education, largely influenced by

the experiences previously mentioned, allowed me to observe unique trends in the lives of

children I was working with here. I began to notice that young people in our society, while

 privileged in many ways in comparison to those I had worked with from Uganda, often timesface their own unique set of challenges and disadvantages. My heart began to break for children

whose fathers had abandoned them at young ages; for family systems where children are not

exposed to positive and compassionate role models. My experiences with children at home and

abroad led me to conclude that children everywhere are in desperate need of adults who will

model virtuous living by demonstrating sincere qualities such as integrity, humility and empathy.

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  This is the reason I have pursued a position within the field of education. I believe

effective teaching occurs when educators care about their students and want in every way for

them to succeed in all areas of life. I believe it is essential that our schools be filled with caring

and compassionate teachers. I also believe that I carry these qualities, and will allow them to

inform my teaching methods and classroom management. In schools, teachers have unique

access into students’ lives that neither parent nor peer have. Teachers are given the opportunity towalk alongside of their students as they not only communicate curricular content, but as they

teach their students how to love, how to serve, and how to be pro-active citizens of the world in

which they live. Students, I believe, will leave school replicating what they have learned not just

from their Language Arts courses but also from their extra-curricular interactions with teachers.

Ultimately, it is my goal as an educator to develop both critical minds and compassionate

hearts, for I believe the two are highly integrated, influencing one other. Over the course of the

next decade, I hope to pursue this goal within the context of a professional community ofeducators that strives to improve the quality of life for each of their students. It is my hope that

my desire to teach vulnerable children, mixed with my passion for cross-cultural diversity, will

open doors to provide meaningful and memorable educational experiences to students of all

 backgrounds. I am confident enough in my own abilities to know that I am capable of teaching

content and modelling virtue, but I am also humble enough to admit that I have significant

learning to do along the way.