✰ MY PREDICTABLE JOURNEY ✰ by Ashley salas

The begining

asalas0089 — 2025-08-20 03:26:14 UTC

Growing up, I had many aspirations, like a designer, a stylist, a scientist, a detective, literally a handful of things. Teaching just wasn't one of those things that fully crossed my mind!! I had a lot of pride, so I just made up in my head that it was something forced, and to me, it was something that I wanted to come to me naturally, and I was so busy pushing it away that I didn't notice that it DID come naturally for me. I grew up with what felt like a big family and a home full of children. I was always taking care of them, almost like taking a mother role that I didn't need to at the age of 5, and I would constantly get told that I should just be a teacher, but once again, there I went, always saying no. I just didn't accept my faith.

Acceptance

asalas0089 — 2025-08-20 03:41:54 UTC

Once I got to college, my freshman year, I majored in psychology, and it was almost everything I expected. I loved learning about how the human mind truly works, but there was that feeling of not being where I needed to be. Immediately after that, I basically tried out different things EXCEPT anything related to teaching. I did art, Media, and filmmaking, but none of them really felt like I truly belonged there until I decided to finally do it. I committed to Earlychildhood education without taking once class, I just did it, and on that first day, it was like everything changed for me. I felt like I belonged; the environment was so "loving" in the sense of healing my inner child. I also met and created the best friendships, as well as getting connections! To gain experience, I would volunteer at my sister's school whenever they needed extra hands, then I would volunteer at the child center at my college for parents who didn't have anyone to take care of their kids, and that summer I went to El Salvador where I had the opportunity to volunteer as a tremporary teacher for children in a summer program where I got to use all the skills i learned in an actual classroom.

Moving Forward

asalas0089 — 2025-08-20 04:08:05 UTC

After finally deciding this was the route I was going to take, I ended up completely moving states, so from night to day, I spontaneously moved from LA to Arkansas. I just moved recently, so this is pretty fresh to me. Because it's all still new, I'm trying to settle down and get back to volunteering and taking the right steps into graduating and eventually getting my Master's. Once I'm fully done with school, I want to fully commit my time to being a teacher. My dream, on the other hand, is to build a school from the ground up for children in lower income communities so that they receive high quality education without having to pay expenses as well as allowing them to have the luxary of even learning because a lot of the time kids in lower income communities and countries don't have that privliage, so to me that'd be the biggest dream/gaol that I hope to one day accomplish.