1. Joy Jamerson Introduction

2. Background Hi! My name is Joy Jamerson. I am born and raised in St. Louis, MO even though sometimes I feel like I’m from somewhere else. I work in the educational system as an educational assistant at the community college working with students that have disabilities and substitute teacher for two school districts working with SSD (special school district) right now. My interest includes hanging out with friends, traveling, road trips, hanging out with family, art, and doing some adventurous things; I’m a free minded person. I have an art background so a lot of pictures you will see is from my photography days. I mostly attended the St. Louis public schools until I was 13 (freshmen in high school) and then transferred over to a rural area school called McCluer Senior High in Florissant, MO which is next to Ferguson, MO. I didn’t mind transferring over to my next school because it was so much bigger and spaced out and then teachers were very welcoming. I think the one thing that will stick with me till old age is during high school, I experienced having a I comfortable relationship with a few of my teachers. This was important to me because there were somethings that I couldn’t talk to my mom about but could always count to get advice from my educators. It was nothing that crossed that line of being disrespectful but things that you wonder about as you got older. That’s something that I try to encourage with students that I work with on an everyday basis.

3. Teaching Every since I was in middle school and told my family that I did not want to work with kids. I didn’t have the patience to do so and I wanted to be in a profession where I would make a lot of money and live a comfortable life. However, my plans did not work out the way I was hoping. My first job was working in an after-school program and I didn’t like it because I wasn’t well trained to handle the kids that I worked with and was release from that position. My second job is when I had a more good handle on working with kids and it also helped that they were very well behaved. But I still wasn’t happy with the money and I went on to work in customer care and a clerical. Even though I was making pretty good money I wasn’t satisfied. That’s when it hit me that the only time I was completely full in a profession is when I was working with children. I choose to work more with students with disabilities not on purpose, but it has been filling every since. In the future I would love to become an administrator. Nothing against working with students but somethings you need a break. As a substitute, I work with students from kindergarten to 12 th grade. It is very rare that you will have a smooth day every day.

4. Future Plans With having my master’s degree I think it will have a great impact on my future, not to mention my bank account but it shows future employers how hard I will work for them and how determine I am to make a difference in a student’s life. I actually would like for a student to look back and say how greatly I impacted their life as they were going through some tough things I life that they couldn’t comprehend.

5. “ ” A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove.... but the world maybe different because I was important in the life of a child. -- Kathy Davis