Who am I?
Raised in Utah, and the oldest of five children, I grew up in a busy and active family, where I was provided with countless opportunities to develop talents, serve the community, and eventually decide that I wanted nothing more than to work with children for the rest of my life.
I married my sweet husband in 2007, and we are currently students at Brigham Young University-Idaho, where we will both graduate with our Bachelors in April of 2009.
Talents and Hobbies
Eight years of formal musical training, membership in fourteen different symphonies, and over four-hundred hours spent training for the high school marching band taught me the real meaning of commitment, as well as the insight to recognize the joys and rewards of good, hard work. Over those eight years I competed at over twenty musical venues, and I learned the beauty of a well-earned success, as well as the motivating power of setbacks.
Passion for reading has also been a central part of who I am from the nights as a child I would beg to stay up reading, and the nights as a teen I'd finish a particularly intriguing novel at two or three in the morning, to the depth of the literary classics I have been studying in my college years. I am excited to share this passion with the children I teach.
This essay, The Book that Changed My Life, describes one reason I love learning and reading.
I have also recently discovered a love for traveling and I hope to have the opportunity to see much of the world in my lifetime, as I believe that the best way to learn is by experiencing, and learning about other places and cultures has the power to teach us much about ourselves.
Service and Leadership
I currently serve as the choir director for our community religious choir, and I hold weekly practices where I direct a choir of twenty members. I organize monthly performances for the members of our congregation, rehearse the choir and polish the music, and strive to touch people's hearts and bring peace and joy to our congregation through our music.
As a teen, I served for two years on the North Logan City Youth Council, and our responsibilities included organizing the yearly city parade and day-long celebration, writing new city ordinances dealing with applicable issues (including motor scooter laws), and designing and setting up the city display booth at the county fair.
I also served on the youth council for our religious seminary, which placed me in a leadership position over 2300 high school students, responsible for monthly wholesome activities, speakers, devotionals, and required me to understand the needs of the students we served, work together with the other thirteen council members, and solve problems so that we as a council could meet those needs.
More recently, my husband and I have worked in the church nursery, caring for eleven children between the ages of eighteen months and three years. We were responsible to teach the children, entertain them, feed them, and care for them during a two-hour time span every week. I learned that children, especially young children, have very special needs, very short attention spans, and can be somewhat difficult to manage at times, yet they possess a spark and a zest for life that inspired me, and I look forward to continuing to spend valuable time with children of all ages as I teach and tutor them.
