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In 1979, my mother began her career as a kindergarten teacher at Northwest Elementary School in the Lebanon City School District.

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In 1992, I was born to Thomas and Jan Peiffer in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

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In the spring of 2008, my sophomore year of high school, I determined that I wanted to become an elementary school teacher after recognizing how much of an impact my mother made in her kindergarten students' literacy journeys.

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When I was younger, I went on a lot of day trips with my family during the summer. Some places we went to included: the Philadelphia Zoo; Ocean City, New Jersey; a farm; etcetera. After each trip, my mother would create a laminated spiral-bound book, in the shape of the destination we visited. The book would include photographs, with captions, of my family and me at the destination. As I have gotten older, I have enjoyed revisiting these books and learning about places that my family and I visited when I was young.

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After I became too old for "laminated spiral-bound book(s), in the shape of the destination(s) we visited" and I learned how to write and form sentences, my mother had me write in a journal each summer. Each time my family and I went somewhere over the summer (to Pittsburgh, the beach, the pool, etcetera), my mother would encourage me to write in a journal describing my events from the day.

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Undeniably, my kindergarten-teaching mother always believed in having a book in my hands. As I mentioned, I traveled a lot when I was little, so books were a necessity in my travel backpack that I took in the car, on the charter bus, or on the airplane. Some book series that I loved included: Spot (by Eric Hill); Biscuit (by Alyssa Satin Capucilli); Henry and Mudge (by Cynthia Rylant); Amber Brown (by Paula Danzinger); and Cam Jansen (by David A. Adler). I also loved books such as: The Very Hungry Caterpillar (by Eric Carle); Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault); The Rainbow Fish (by Marcus Pfister); among many others. I was very fortunate to be exposed to wonderful children's literature so early in my life.

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I can only imagine the type of educator my mother was in her beginning years of teaching. However, as I got older and as my mother continued to teach kindergarten, I witnessed her dedication and love of teaching. My mother would lesson plan at our kitchen table, always thinking of how she could make her district's highly-scripted reading curriculum relevant for the diverse learners she had in her classroom. In addition, she would create activities for her kindergarteners to do, such as: writing "How-To Blow a Bubble", where the students had a face on a piece of construction paper, with a pink balloon coming out of the face's mouth to represent the bubble; or creating an under-the-sea theme in the hallway, where her students would make jellyfish (with paper plates, googly-eyes, and streamers), among other creatures to hang in the hallway's display. In addition when I was younger, I also remember going into school with my mother to help her to prepare her classroom for the school year, as well as during the school day to spend time with her kindergarten students.

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In 1998, I began first grade with Mrs. Natalie Mawritz at Forge Road Elementary School in the Palmyra Area School District.

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As I have gone through grade school and more recently college, I have learned that teachers can make, or unfortunately, break, your year. Fortunately, I had wonderful teachers in elementary school, especially in first and second grade.

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First grade is where I began my literacy journey as an independent reader. While I was only six/seven years old, I can remember Mrs. Natalie Mawritz, my first grade teacher, as clear as a bell. I can picture what she looked like, her voice, and how she acted each day as my first grade teacher. Mrs. Mawritz loved teaching, especially reading. While I do not remember learning to read in small-groups, I do remember reading from anthologies from our district's reading curriculum, while sitting on the carpet in the front of our classroom. I was always praised for reading with expression. I also remember bringing home a nightly book-in-a-bag, which Mrs. Mawritz differentiated to meet her students' reading levels. In addition, I remember participating in Pizza Hut's Book-It program, and earning a silver sticker on my pin, and of course a personal pan pizza, for each month when I read a certain number of books. As I "graduated" from first grade and continued through the Palmyra Area School District, Mrs. Mawritz also journeyed from a first grade teacher to a reading specialist in the district.

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Similarly to my wonderful first grade experience with Mrs. Mawritz, I also had an excellent experience in second grade with my teacher, Mrs. Linda Snyder. As you learned about Forge Road Elementary School in kindergarten and first grade, you knew you wanted to be in Mrs. Snyder's class in second grade. Mrs. Snyder, like Mrs. Mawritz, loved to teach reading. She also loved doing plays. Our class had plays for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Mother's Day. We, the students, with Mrs. Snyder's help, created the characters, scripts, and painted the scenery. We would preform the plays for other classes in the building, as well as our families. In second grade, I also remember being Book Buddies with Mr. Snyder's (Mrs. Snyder's husband) fifth graders at Pine Street Elementary School. Once a cycle, we would walk to Pine Street to visit Mr. Synder's class, or visa versa, and we would read with his fifth graders.

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My mother had a student named Austin Nafzinger. Austin was placed back in my mother's kindergarten class from first grade in the beginning of the school year, per her principal's recommendation. Austin was very low developmentally, and he also had a severe speech disability. Both disabilities made him very reluctant to participate in any literacy activities (reading, writing, etcetera) in the classroom. In first grade (prior to coming to my mother's kindergarten class), when he was told it was time for reading, he would crawl under the tables in the classroom, throw tantrums, and make himself physically sick. My mother, being an excellent teacher, learned of his likes (Spongebob, Spider-Man, and Scooby-Doo) and implemented them into his daily classroom reading activities. While my mother's aide would take the rest of the students to do an activity, my mother would teach him one-on-one phonics, decoding, and reading strategies from Spongebob, Spider-Man, and Scooby-Doo beginning reader books. In addition, Austin received direct reading instruction via the school district's reading program, Reading Mastery, which provided explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and sound-letter correspondence. At the end of the year, when Austin was being assessed by Mrs. Chris Burchfield, a consultant from Reading Mastery, my mother went in the hallway with Austin, as he was very reluctant to leave my mother. Furthermore, my mother was one of the only people who could understand what Austin was saying. After each sentence he read, he would look up at my mother for reassurance that he was doing okay. She would simply look at him and say, "You're doing good, Austin! Keep going!" As Austin read, Mrs. Burchfield and my mother both had tears in their eyes. While Austin was not considered on-grade level at the end of kindergarten, he made exceptional progress, and ultimately, learned to enjoy reading because of my mother's above-and-beyond teaching efforts.

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While all of this was occurring with Austin, my mother would come home with many, many stories about him. I heard of his difficulties in the beginning of the year, to his accomplishments at the end of the year. After hearing of Austin's journey, and my mother's journey with Austin, I thought to myself, "I would love to have that type of an impact on the life of a child." Thus, why I chose to become an elementary school teacher.

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In 2009, I did an internship in the spring of my junior year of high school in third grade in the Palmyra Area School District with Mr. Jonathan Kelly, one of our baseball coaches. I remember that I loved going to his third grade classroom each day and interacting with his students in reading and math. When I was a sophomore in college (2011), I also did an observation with Mr. Kelly, however, he had moved to fifth grade. While I enjoyed my fifth grade observation with Mr. Kelly, I remember not enjoying the developmental level of the students and the curriculum as much in fifth grade as I did in third grade. Consequently, I decided to focus my Elementary Education degree in the grades of PreK-4.

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When I interview for teaching jobs, I can almost guarantee one of the questions is, "Why did you become a teacher?". I expect the interview committee wants to hear something along the lines of, "I love children", "The lightbulb moment", or "I played school when I was little and had my stuffed animals become my students". While I do love children, and I do love seeing the lightbulb moment, my desire to become a teacher was indeed a lightbulb moment. Now as I think back about my wonderful childhood and how much of an influence my mother, a former kindergarten teacher, had on me throughout my life, it is because of her why I became an elementary school teacher. Throughout her career, I saw how much of an impact she made on the diverse learners she had in her classroom and how much her students loved learning because of her. Therefore, if I am able to become half the teacher my mother was throughout her thirty-three years as a kindergarten teacher, I would consider myself a very accomplished educator.