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Linda Miller always knew she wanted to be a teacher, an ambition shaped by her experiences in 24 different schools between kindergarten and graduation.

“I didn’t grow up as traditionally as most people. We just moved a lot,” Linda said. “I had a lot of really fantastic teachers — that I could come in the middle of the year and they acted like I’d been there the whole year and didn’t treat me differently. I wanted to be that for somebody one day.”

Linda’s experiences moving across the country didn’t stop after high school graduation, either.

“My husband was in the military, and then after he retired we moved back to �޻���ֱ��,” she said. “I always wanted to finish school, so UL Lafayette just seemed like the logical choice because it was right here.”

Waiting to finish her degree gave Linda a different experience than most college students.

“I think I do have a different perspective from being an older student. I mean, we still complain about homework and assignments, but I wasn’t thinking about graduating and being out on my own for the first time,” she said.

“I think because I have real-world experience — and I don’t meant to say that college students don’t because a lot have more real-world experience than I do — but being older, I still had to pay a mortgage. I was a paralegal for 15 years, and knowing how the world works, and how having a job works, and how expectations work.”

Getting Experience in the Classroom

From her experiences growing up, Linda initially wanted to teach high school, but discovered she had a love for teaching middle schoolers. She completed her in a sixth-grade classroom at Youngsville Middle School.

“I loved it – I didn’t think that I would like students that young, but they really surprised me,” she said. “I expected them to be more immature than they were. Don’t get me wrong – they were in sixth grade, but they were a lot more ‘with it’ than I expected.”

Linda said her Teacher Residency experience was extremely valuable and really prepared her for life as a teacher.

“I think just a lot of the little things that they can’t teach you in the college classroom (are what I gained from it),” she said. “I was really lucky because I was involved in everything, so I almost felt like I taught there, in a way, because they included me in the conversations.”

“That was the best thing: being able to be hands-on — and the little things: how to make deposits from fees you collect and how to fill out certain paperwork,” she continued. “And that sounds crazy because it’s not the actual teaching the content part, but it’s those things that you can do more efficiently so you have more time to prepare to teach the content part.”

Now that she’s leading her own classroom, Linda loves her second career as a teacher.

“I like meeting the new kids every year,” she said. “I was walking out to duty today and (the kids) were like, ‘Hey, Ms. Miller!’ Getting to know them, and getting them more comfortable and getting to know me. I love getting to know them and seeing how their personalities change over the year.”

Learn more about the secondary education and teaching major.