I mainly substitute teach for grades 6-12 in any subject, including support services like AIS and Resource Room. I pick up jobs over college breaks, during the 2023-2024 school year, I was able to work 30 days. During these days, I was required to take attendance, handle emergencies, maintain an orderly classroom, and make sure students stayed on task. I was in charge of following the lesson plans left by the permanent teacher. At the end of each job, I had to leave the teacher detailed notes of how they went and if there were any issues. During the past school year, I had the opportunity to make meaningful connections with many of the students at the Middle School as I frequently worked there after the Spring 2024 semester had ended. Many of the 6th graders would come up to me in the hallway or at bus duty to say hello and get a high-five. Many of the students would ask me if I could sub for their teacher instead. Additionally, a few 8th-grade students were also happy to see me in the building. I was extremely happy to see students happy to see me as I felt like I had created a meaningful bond with them during my short 40-minute class with them. Even though I could get strict at times, they still talked highly of me. Knowing that students were excited to have me as their substitute teacher made me proud as it was my first time truly teaching in a classroom and managing a room full of 20 students. I plan on continuing to be a substitute teacher until at least the end of my senior year, and I hope I can continue making meaningful connections while growing my classroom management skills. I feel like being a substitute teacher has helped me improve my communication and personal skills.

I am currently a rising junior at Binghamton University who is studying Biochemistry and History. I am an active member of Explorchestra and will serve on the History Department DEI and Library Committees during the 2024/2025 academic year.

LEAD stands for Leaders in Engagement, Advocacy, and Democracy. This is a semester-long program offered by the Center for Civic Engagement. This program has students take part in weekly meetings and complete at least 20 hours of community service with a community partner. The topics of the weekly meeting included getting to know your community, social justice, leadership, DEI, professional development, and turning service into advocacy.During my time in the program, I volunteered mainly at NoMa, CHOW, and the CCE. If you want to know more about my roles at these volunteer sites, go to my volunteer section. I also volunteered at a few on-time events like an egg hunt and a food pantry. At the end of the program, I had completed nearly 50 hours of service.I was able to make deep and meaningful connections with my site supervisors and with my fellow volunteers. I was also able to connect with the regular guests at my sites relatively quickly. These deeper connections allowed me to better serve them. The weekly meetings helped me explore new topics, that I may not have thought of before taking part in this program. For example, during the meeting about getting to know your community, I learned a new way of viewing a community. I learned that instead of seeing the faults in the community, one should look for the strengths of the community. Additionally, I learned that instead of assuming what the community needs, one should talk to community members and community leaders about what the community requires. I also took particular note of the meeting about DEI. I learned that sometimes people have privileges, that they do not know or think about. However, if one acknowledges these privileges, they can be used as a platform to help others.

The Innovation Scholars Program helps students develop the techniques of innovation. During this course, I had the ability to apply the topics of the class to the group project associated with the class. This program taught me a wide range of skills including how to conduct a successful interview, how to brainstorm, how to work in a team, how to set meaningful and reachable goals, how to create a prototype, and how to gather consumer feedback.My team of 4 focused on the food waste issue on the Binghamton University Main Campus. Throughout the course of the project, we conducted field research and formal interviews with both students and staff. If you want to know more about our project, head down to the project section.Innovation Scholars taught me that sometimes one's project can change directions and that it is part of the process. This happened with our project as we learned more, we discovered that the students were wasting food due to its poor quality rather than they were just wasteful. The Innovation Scholars also taught me that failing can sometimes be a part of the process and to not fear failure. Instead, learning what went wrong and how to fix it is more important than failing something. Finally, this program taught me that the first step of any process is getting out there and talking to others. Interviews are an important first step to understanding a problem. Conducting a good interview and asking probing questions is how to gather useful data to make impactful changes/projects.

The Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) gives first-years and transfers the ability to take part in a program that allows them to meet new people and grow their leadership skills. Each Knowledge Community (KC) consists of 12 students and 2 mentors. I was accepted into the Environment and Ecology Knowledge Community. Participants had to attend weekly community meetings, attend program-wide events, participate in workshops, and create a Service Learning Project (SLP).During my time in ELP, I was in charge of helping to create the lesson plans for our SLP because I had the knowledge of the topics we were teaching. I helped create the slideshows, which had to be written in a way in which they could be understood by young children. I had the additional role of being selected as the point of contact with our SLP partner, the Binghamton City School District. I was tasked with writing professional emails to the Superintendent of Curriculum and Principles. In these emails, I had to clearly state what my team was hoping to achieve and what we had planned. Sometimes, this involved making phone calls to clarify things stated in the email so everyone was on the same page. I also received the mentee spotlight for my KC. If you want to learn more about the SLP, you can visit the Project section.I valued my time in ELP as I was able to form meeting connections with my KC members; I still talk to some of them to this day. ELP allowed me to develop my leadership and professional skills. Their program-wide events helped me develop my networking skills and taught me how to form and maintain connections. Additionally, we had an ELP Olympics, which taught me how to effectively use my leadership skills to achieve a goal. ELP taught me how to work in a team and what it means to be a part of a successful team. Finally, ELP taught me how to set meaningful goals and what needs to happen for me to reach the goals I set for myself.