When I think about my journey to become a teacher, I think about how difficult it was to make sense of what I was learning. My mind felt confused and scattered at times because this was something so new to me. How can I be going back to school at such an age? There’s something about the saying, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” that scared me a little. But I perservered. I pushed. I had sleepless nights. I dealt with divorce. I had obstacles. I had support.

My journey reminds me of a small piece of driftwood that slowly flows down a river. It starts off rough around the edges, slivers, broken off pieces and branches, much like me at the beginning of my journey…new…fresh but rough around the edges. As this driftwood flows down the river, it meets shallow water and the rocks rub the driftwood, slowly smoothing some of the rough edges away. This is much like my learning and my growth during this journey. As time passes on and many many miles down the river, the driftwood slowly becomes beautifully smooth from water petrifying the wood which are the obstacles and hard difficult times within the journey. Much like the petrified wood, it doesn’t make us weaker but makes us stronger and more resilient. Now…looking at the driftwood piece…it’s still not perfectly smooth. There are rough edges still and some parts are old and fragile. But this isn’t the end of my journey either, it is still my journey and much like the driftwood, I will still be slowly drifting down the river smoothing out my edges.