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The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Winthrop chapter.

Have you ever had a passion for something since you were little? Well, mine has always been teaching. Ever since I was five years old and moved to the states, that is the one thing that has been constant.

When I moved to the United States when I was five years old, I played school. I would be the teacher to my stuff animals and friends. I literally would make worksheets and handwrite a lot of copies. The one thing I would constantly make would be math worksheets. Ever since then, I was always the teacher’s pet throughout my grad school years. I was constantly helping teachers with grading. When it came to helping my teachers throughout grade school, it felt like a dream come true.

Why do I want to teach?

The answer is simple to me, but it is hard to explain. Even though I have always wanted to be a teacher, that is not the only reason why. I have always wanted to help people out. I feel like this is the best way I could possibly do just that. I can help by teaching my future students. I had two good math teachers, one in middle school and one in high school. Other than those two teachers, I had to teach myself. I want to be that one good math teacher. I want to be able to be there for my students and be that one person they can go to as well. I want to be able to help my students the best way I could.

Why did I choose to be a math teacher?

This was a long and hard debate in my head that came up in my sophomore year of high school. It was between High School Math, High School English, and Elementary Education. I thought about elementary education because I love kids, but I have come to the realization that I love them just enough to babysit them. I thought about teaching high school English because I loved English but not as much as I love math. That is what is came down to. I have always loved math. I would do little math games as a kid. I would play games with the little math sheets that you fill out in elementary and middle school. I would play math games with dice. Math has always been one of my favorite things in the world. I also know that not a lot of people enjoy math and I want to try and show my future students that it can be interesting and fun. I want to be able to show my future students that math is not the worst thing in the world. I want to help my future students. I want to be the best teacher that I could possibly be. I want to be able to be that one teacher that I never really had. I want to be able to be there for my future students the best way I could possibly be there!

Paula Nakamura

Winthrop '24

I am a Junior Secondary Mathematics Education Major. I am very clumsy …. very! I love to hang out with friends and meet new people :)