Major change!

Well, we made it through the first two weeks of the semester! They were probably the craziest first two weeks of a semester I've ever had actually.

The first week was crazy cause of the whole ER/hospital/almost death we encountered.....

And this week has been crazy because I decided to change my major!

.....I know, I'm in my fourth year of school and I'm just BARELY changing....I'm nuts, right??

No!

It's times like this in my life that I know that my Heavenly Father is pointing me in the right direction. There are few times in my life that I have felt the spirit so strong telling me where I should go...and I know this is one of those times.

Rewind.

When I graduated high school I had sooooo many plans for my life- graduate in 3 years (don't worry, I had it planned out, it WAS possible), go on a mission, go to Peru and teach ninos pequenos, uhhh....yep, I basically was going to be really cool.

Now four years later I have lived through so many different things than I thought I would and may I say, I'm really glad.

I'm really glad that I lived down in Cedar and was able to experience a massive year of growing up. I'm glad that God knew I needed that experience to become independent. I'm also glad that He so strongly told me to move home after that year too. That was another time that the spirit bluntly pointed me in the right direction.

If I wouldn't have moved home I wouldn't have met Jeff. :)

Now that I'm in my 5th semester at Weber I can truly say that this is the perfect time for me to change my major.

Ever since I was in 2nd grade I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I made my neighbors who were a year older and a year younger than my sister....and my sister sit in my living room and I would teach them the things that I was learning in school. Granted they were 3, 4, and 5 year olds, but whatever.

So all this time I've had Elementary Education in my sights and wasn't ever going to look back.

Untiiiiil....recently....

The past semester or so I've been taking these "CHF" classes at Weber that "certify" elementary teachers to teach kindergarten. Weber used to only have a degree where you could teach 1st-6th grade, but they realized in the past couple of years that they really need kindergarten teachers and only adding two classes to the degree would be their ticket to licensing teachers to teach K-6.

In the end.....these two "CHF" classes were the BAIN of my existence. They were holding me back from getting into the education program. These classes HAD to be completed prior to entering the program and they couldn't be taken the same semester.

It literally took me three semesters to get into the first class because of the waiting list. Seriously.....they were the BAIN of....k, yeah, you get it.

Well, something happened when I started taking these classes.......

These classes are all about early childhood, AKA teaching kids between the ages of 2 and 5. It's totally geared toward pre-school.

I started taking these classes and kept telling myself...."these classes are BAIN of my..." but as I sat through class I was SO mezmorized by what we were learning. I was so intrigued by this so called Early Childhood Education and thought....wow, this stuff is really cool!

I then started to evaluate myself. I started thinking of what I really wanted to do with my life.

What really tipped me overboard into the sea of Early Childhood Education though was one night I was talking to this lady in my ESL class who has taught pre-school out of her home for, I dunno, 20 some odd years. She was such a sweet lady and I could tell how much she loved what she did. She spoke so highly of pre-school and the benefits of everything that she does.

I went home that night almost in a freak out because I knew I needed to change my major......

I had a "Just face it, Amber" moment when I said to myself....maybe the fact that little kids love me so much is a gift from Heavenly Father that I need to recognize and use. (Refer to my post from a month ago about me and little kids)

I didn't want to tell Jeff....or my mom....or anybody cause I was just thinking, are they going to think I'm ridiculous for wanting to teach pre-school?

Jeff is seriously the best husband ever though. When I did tell him he just listened and told me I needed to do what I really wanted to do and he would support me with whatever that decision was.

Well, I weighed the pros and cons and the more I thought it out the Early Childhood option had a lot more pros than Elementary Ed.

In the end, I did change my major to Early Childhood Education and now here I am! I've been so excited this whole week! I don't know what it is about the subject of early childhood, but it makes me love learning even more than my elementary education classes did. Learning the process of young childrens development and how they learn is fascinating to me. It's way more technical than you'd think it would be.

So now I'm going to graduate next spring. I have one semester of classes in the fall, then my student teaching will be in the spring. :) That makes a grand total of 9 semesters of school for me. Usually people graduate in 8....so 9 isn't too bad, right?

I think, in the end, the biggest reason I decided to switch was because of how I can make a career out of this major as opposed to the Elementary Education major.

With this major I can do all kinds of things like daycare, head start, pre-school....I can be a pre-school coordinator (which is essentially a principal of a pre-school, ha ha).

My real plan is to own my own pre-school at my house. I think it's the best option for a stay at home mom. I probably won't start an actual pre-school till my youngest is in school, but I can start a daycare and slowly mold it into a pre-school while my youngest kids are babies.

If I was to be an elementary teacher I would be out of the house and honestly, I think I would be a lot more stressed and not able to be in my kid's lives as much while they are little.

So that's my general plan for now....I'm going to teach pre-school and someday....far far far far far down the road if I teach for like 15 years and start to want to be around older kids then I can go back to school and get my Elementary Ed. degree.

There is so much that changes in education, even just the technology alone, that if I didn't teach in a school for over 25-30 years I would have no idea what I was doing and would need to go back to school anyways. So much changes in curriculum, laws, policies....my math teacher recently told us that all teachers are going to have to re-learn math because they are switching from arithmetic to geometric based math in the schools....in the end, too much changes that I don't think it would be smart to get that degree now.

Plus my heart is in pre-school! Ha ha :)

Having my Early Childhood degree I will always be able to do pre-school. Learning colors, how to share, counting to ten, art, music, etc. probably won't be changing.

Who knows? Maybe 40 years from now I'll still be teaching pre-school in my basement and loving every minute of it.

One thing that I've really learned through the past couple of years is life doesn't ever turn out like you THINK it will, but usually that's because Heavenly Father knows what is what and why we should be doing the things we do.

I'm just grateful that I have had those few strong experiences with the spirit and never ending small promptings to point my life in the right direction. God knows our strengths and helps us realize where we can use them.