"Miss Kristi - you do good job with the teaching. I love Mexico."
- A Vietnamese English language learner in kindergarten
5:45 am - I have hit the snooze button five times already - and that doesn't count the cell phone that I threw against the wall ten minutes ago. My disdain for the alarm clock has me wondering who actually created the alarm... Seriously - whose idea was it to awaken themselves with an extremely loud repetitive beep that sounds like a warning for the apocalypse? I wonder if I can go to class in jammies. I love jammies. While we're on the subject of inventors - I wonder who came up with 8 am classes... ARG - I loathe the morning.
I love coffee. Coffee coffee coffee. My dad tells me he likes coffee so strong it will put hair on your chest. I concur on the strength issue but due to my gender I'm trying to stray away from an excess of chest hair. I think my love affair with coffee started back in my teenage years, but we really became close during my first round of grad school. Oh engineering - I remember the days. Sleeping 2 hours a night and drinking 3 pots of coffee before noon - that was the life.
WAIT JUST A MINUTE...
I thought you were studying elementary education. How in the world does one go from being an engineer to a kindergarten teacher?
Well that my friends is an interesting story. Maybe I should start from the beginning...
I, Kristi Leigh Minsterman (nicknames: Mins, Keeks), was born at 9:11 am on a cool, dewy, spring day in 1982 (May 11th to be exact). I was a happy child growing up in the small town of Dauphin, Pennsylvania, where I spent my days playing with the neighborhood boys and swimming in the nearby creek. I often played with my older brother Jeffrey (whom I call Bubby), although I developed more of a loner mentality when he started to pin me down and sit on my head. My younger school days were fabulous as I moved from clique to clique trying to determine the correct way to french cuff a pair of jeans. Upon turning the ripe old age of 14, I was shipped off to Central Dauphin East public high school, which was more than a stone's throw away from my parents' house to say the least. (Enter my disdain for school districts and the so-called "fairly drawn" boundary lines). I spent my days playing softball and basketball while still finding time to frustrate my poor mother with hormonal teenage antics.
Having lived in a quiet town for 18 years, I decided to attend the University of Maryland for my undergraduate work. Mama and Daddy were slightly nervous about my decision seeing as how I would be living so close to D.C. ("the city") and my only predator up until then had been the bear that lived in our backyard. After learning how to lock my car doors and operate a can of mace, I was finally released in the land of the the terrible terrapin. I liked computers and was good with them so my studies began in computer science - thus my introduction to the all-male classroom and my role as the "token" white girl. After several months of creating computer programs and wanting to jump out my 7th story window into the dumpster below, I decided that programming just wasn't for me. I had more style than that. Ok, ok - I couldn't hack it. So I moved to the computer science drop out program in the business school - concisely titled Management Science and Statistics, Decision Information Sciences. It was closely tied to computer science but had a more personal touch. One day on my way into biology class this nice blond girl Ashley ("AK") held the door open for me. I figured, hey - she's a girl and I sure could use some girlfriends so we sat together in class. Now six years later she is my very best friend. Oh, did I also mention I also lived with a load of frat boys? College Park wasn't the safest town so I dealt with their little boy antics in order to keep myself from getting shot. (Really I loved them all and miss them dearly). Although, they weren't so sweet when my arm paralysis set in and I needed help braiding my hair.
Insert quick story - one day my junior year I woke up and couldn't feel my right arm. Feeling didn't come back for 5 weeks and I couldn't use my dominant appendage for the 9 months prior to my first surgery. I learned to write left handed, dry my hair left handed, even drive a manual transmission car with one hand - sorry officer. My funny bone nerve - the ulnar nerve - had deteriorated. After two surgeries and months of PT - I finally have function back and the majority of the feeling, but I'm still in a good deal of pain.
Back to academics - my junior year I decided I really liked this thing known as mathematical programming and I wanted to teach it on the collegiate level. Although - I would need more of a quantitative background before applying for my PhD. Enter UVA.
My acceptance to Virginia came way of the internet and I was so suspicious I actually called to confirm that they were, in fact, aware that I was a girl and didn't know a thing about vectors. Apparently playing the minority card worked well in this hand of my life and I got a full ride for my masters in systems engineering. Engineering was a whole different ballgame - I didn't have the background that most of the students did, I was 22 years old, 2 hours from my boyfriend and friends, 4 hours from my family, in a town I didn't know, and I constantly had professors telling me that they didn't have time to answer silly questions. "Go look it up in a book." The stress of playing catch up, serving as a teaching assistant for classes with 200 undergrads (and material that baffled me), trying to man my post as the president for the student organization, and work on my thesis for Amazon.com, began to take its toll on me, physically and mentally. All I wanted to do was teach and these kids didn't want to learn. All I wanted to do was learn and these professors didn't want to teach. It all seemed a little hopeless and I began to doubt my ability to ever stand and lecture the way I wanted to.
Skip forward to May 31, 2006. I was admitted to the Sheppard Pratt Center for Eating Disorders in Towson, MD. I had been sick for over 7 years and had managed to keep it hidden from everyone in my life until it literally almost killed me. During my three-month stint in the hospital I realized that as hard as I tried to make myself happy in engineering it just wasn't working. All I really wanted to do was teach and everything else was for the birds. I made the VERY difficult decision to leave the engineering field, put my degree on hold, and try to get myself healthy. With the unconditional support of my friends and family, I applied to work in a kindergarten classroom at Charlottesville Catholic School (CCS) - a solid and loving environment where I met many friends and could ease back into everyday life. Little did I know that 20 children would change my life forever...
7:40 am - Back to the real world and running late for class (not surprising with my lack of love for the morning hours). My life is so different today because of my spontaneous decision to begin teaching. I feel so blessed by my time at CCS - especially because it prompted me not only to apply to the Curry School but also to begin my own tutoring business (Infinite Success Tutoring). I help between 10 and 15 children a week in subjects ranging from introductory reading to high school calculus. I am now healthy, happy, and well on my way to hopefully becoming the teacher that every student dreams of having.
Kindergarten Field Trip to Carter's Mountain OrchardNote: all children have a signed photo release on file