Intellectual Autobiography

I have never considered myself to be and interdisciplinarian, I however have always wanted to become a teacher. Since I was little, when my parents or grandparents asked me what I wanted to be when I get older, I always said I wanted to become a teacher. However, when I was applying to colleges, I was unsure if that is the direction I wanted to take my life in. I knew that I wanted to be a Virginia Tech Hokie, so I applied to Tech, was accepted, and moved into the dorms in August. I was undecided when I first came to college and figured that I had time to make up my mind. I then met my friend Bridget, who also wanted to become a teacher, and I decided that teaching was what I wanted to do.
When I found out that there was no longer an Education undergraduate major, I was unsure of what I was going to do. Bridget then explained the IDST program to me, and I said ‘okay, I’ll go with that.” I was a still a little wary of the whole idea of the program, but I went ahead and took a chance on it. When I learned more about this program, I thought that this would really work for me. I had been having a hard time deciding on what I wanted to major in, because there were so many things that interested me. So I chose my minors to be PK-6 Social Studies and PK-6 Math with a focus on Education.
Math and Social Studies has been one of my favorite subjects since high school. I am not sure why I have always liked math, but I really think that it was my freshman year in High School when I really began to like it. I think that this had a lot to do with the different math teachers that I had. They always seemed to make it fun and looked like they enjoyed teaching it. One reason that I enjoy math so much, is the problem solving aspect to it. My favorite math to learn was Geometry, and I especially loved doing proofs. When ever I told someone that proofs were my favorite part of geometry, they would always look at me like I was crazy. I just always enjoyed figuring out the answers and solving the problems. Social Studies on the other hand, is a subject that has interested me since grade school. My interest in this subject I think comes from my 4th grade teacher who made it fun to learn. I also like the idea of learning how people lived generations ago. It has always interested me how things came to be the way they are, and we learn a lot of that from history and social studies.
So when it came to a major, I thought that it was great that I could combine two of my interests and use them as a way to reach my goal of becoming a teacher. Teaching, I feel is a problem that I want to use my Interdisciplinary tools to figure out. I view teaching as a problem because of the focus on SOL objectives. Since I was a freshman in High School, the main focus of a teacher’s curriculum was and is SOL objectives. I do not think that this is the problem, but the way that some teachers have lost sight of the fun on learning. Teachers are so concerned, especially in Virginia, about having the kids meet all the objectives that there is no fun in learning any more. This is the problem that I see. I want to use my ISDT major and find a way to bring the fun back to learning. I feel that if a child is enjoying learning, then chances are they are learning more.
I feel that by being an Interdisciplinary Studies major will help me to achieve this goal because I have been shown how to look at problems from the different angles and find different solutions to them. I feel that this will be a major part of making a course plan for my students. I will be able to look at the problem of the objectives that I have to teach and will be able to analyze these objectives from different angles and find solutions to make learning the objectives fun. This is my goal as a future teacher, to make the kids learn by having fun and enjoy it.
As I said before, I have never considered my self to be an Interdisciplinarian. Since being in Interdisciplinary Studies, I have found that I have some Interdisciplinary characteristics. I took a risk with this program, so I suppose I could consider myself to be somewhat of a risk taker. I have also considered myself to be reliable, flexible, patience, and sensitive to others. I would also like to think that I am a person that likes to take the initiative and can assert myself when needed. There are many qualities of an Interdisciplinarian that are discussed in our text book, all of which I hope to achieve in my lifetime. After reading the chapters in the books, I figured out how much of an Interdisciplinarian that I am.