Update from Miss BYU: I’m happy, I teach students, and I’m from Maryland

I have recently begun to greatly appreciate the contributions and impacts that teachers have on my life and general state of happiness. You’d think that I would have realized this earlier, given my plan of the past three years to study to become a secondary education teacher, but my motivation to become a teacher really never came from any great teacher that I had.

I have, of course, had many amazing teachers. I’m grateful for all of them. I just seem to have developed a desire to become a teacher because of the students that I will one day be able to influence and help, rather than from the examples of teachers I’ve known before.

My recent appreciation of teachers has stemmed from a class that I am taking this semester called “Exploration of Teaching”, which has been one of my absolute favorite classes that I’ve taken so far. To capture what I’ve learned in that class in one sentence, I will quote my professor: “When somebody asks you what you teach, from now on you will say, ‘I teach students,’ not, ‘English.’”

The largest portion of the class takes place in local middle (yes, I actually do frequent a middle school in Utah, not a junior high) and high schools, where I observe participating teachers and their classrooms in order to learn whether I really do want to be a teacher when I grow up.

It has been so much fun so far. Over the past three weeks, I observed four sixth-grade English class periods Monday through Thursday at a middle school in Spanish Fork, and I have to say, it was a joy. The teacher I observed was gone all of this last week because she got married last Friday, and her team teacher for one period jokingly asked the class the day before the wedding if they had any marriage advice for their teacher.

They thought pretty hard, guys, they did. I suppose most of them felt unqualified to really offer advice, but one brave young man offered, “My dad really likes it when my mom gives him a massage.” He later added, “And my mom really likes it when my dad does the dishes.” When asked how often his dad actually does the dishes, his reply was, “Never.”

I had started to forget that I wanted to teach to teach students, not because I love English oh so much, because up until this semester my classes have all been English rather than pedagogically focused. Because my now-married teacher mentor took her first week of married life off school (like a total slacker), I got to teach all of the class periods that I was previously shadowing this past week. She made sure I knew that I could hand control off to the substitute teacher any time, but I chose not to.

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching all the classes that I have, and I think the students recognized me and appreciated me as an authority in the classroom. I have already learned so much from standing at the front of the classroom and trying to keep the attention of twenty-five sixth graders and to explain to them for the fifth time that when I say they need to quote an article, I mean actually taking the author’s words and not just summarizing the gist of a paragraph and putting quotation marks around it.

I thought the students already knew my name when I started teaching this week, but after several cries of “Miss teacher!” and “Miss BYU!” and “Miss Rose!” (probably because of my flower print shirt that day), I decided it was time to re-establish my name as “Miss Willis”. The same student who called me Miss Rose also frequently asked me if he could sit and work with his buddy, promising that they would stay on task under authority of “the bro code”. The bro code promise is accompanied by a handshake, it so happens.

This boy was very entertaining and I’ll miss his antics, as well as the comments, questions, and diligent work of all the other students I taught and learned the names of over these past few weeks. I never thought that I would be so interested to know how their argumentative writing skills would progress this school year, but I find myself a little sad that I won’t be with them to continue helping them figure it out. On Monday, I will start my classroom observation at a nearby high school, which I am also looking forward to.

One other moment this semester that has helped me appreciate teachers have been all of the births in the English department, followed by the almost immediate return of the new mother to active duty. One of our English department leaders is technically on maternity leave this semester, but has been coming into work almost every day anyway just because she loves her job so much.

Then there’s my Shakespeare professor, who presumably gave birth last Thursday (I have surmised from the calendar notification that came up on the projector this Wednesday that said “Birth: Tomorrow”), and plans to return to teach the class two and a half weeks from the time her baby was born.

Mothers are awesome, I want to be one some day.

…I’ll probably take more time off of work than these two women, though.

Going back in time a little bit to the few days before school started this month, I accomplished a goal that I’ve had since my freshman year at BYU: hike Mount Timpanogos. For those who haven’t heard, Mount Timpanogos is a popular hike that covers a little over 14 miles round trip and gains around 4,400 feet in elevation. My friend Luke and I decided to hike it the Saturday before the semester started and we were joined by one of Luke’s neighbors.

I will say that I was the least experienced hiker in our little group and they probably would have finished it a little bit faster if it had just been the two of them. I like to think it would have been a little less fun, though.

I am so grateful that they chose to do the hike with me. They helped me accomplish my goal of about three years and were patient with me as I struggled through. One of the motivations for hiking Timpanogos seems to be the view at the top. I wouldn’t really know because it was foggy when I went, but I thought it was beautiful anyway.

There is something magical about standing on a peak in the freezing cold in the middle of a cloud, debating whether to stay on the peak long enough for the fog to clear out or get to a more reasonable elevation before completely regretting the decision to hike at all. We ended up choosing the latter option, and I have no regrets.

I’m learning to push myself more and more and I’m grateful for the people who are helping me do that.

I have also developed the habit of baking bread every Sunday. Gotta get good for the future forever family, y‘know.

Well, honestly, it’s just a skill I’ve been wanting to develop for a long time. It makes me happy that I am finally finding the time to do it now.

Another endeavor of mine this month has been to found the Maryland club here at BYU. Preparing for this semester, a few of my White Oak Ward friends and I realized that there were going to be a respectable number of students at BYU from Maryland this semester, based solely on the people we already knew from Maryland who would be attending. Our excitement about this has grown every week as we randomly run in to more students from Maryland, complete strangers from our home state.

Marylanders are everywhere! Just this week, I was sitting in my religion class next to a complete stranger. We start chatting and immediately find out we’re both from Montgomery County! So I immediately got her phone number so I could let her know when our next Maryland club meeting would be.

So, we decided to start a Maryland club. It isn’t official yet, but we had one little gathering already and I loved it. I was looking into the process required to start the club, and one step includes writing out a purpose statement for the club. I’ll share with you my unrevised and unapproved (as of yet by the Maryland Club Council) for our aspiring society:

Our purpose is to give people a place to meet friends and strangers from Maryland and learn about and enjoy Maryland and Marylanders together here at BYU.

It’s kind of goofy, but so is Maryland Club.

The day I am finishing writing this letter is the first day of General Conference. I am eager to hear the words that the apostles and other appointed speakers have to share with the world today. I’ve been trying to seek answers to a few questions in my life through scripture study, prayer, and church attendance, and I know that General Conference is another of many appointed ways God has given us of hearing from Him.

I’m grateful for a God and Father who wants to talk to me.

I hope this letter has found you all well, and I hope that whatever endeavors you are undertaking, you are happy and growing.

Love,

Sophie