Name: Jordyn Kaplan
Hometown: Media, Pa.
Major: History, minors in Political Science and Urban Education
Activities: Kite and Key, Class Board, Penn Hillel, Chi Omega, West Philadelphia Tutoring Project, Community School Student Partnerships, History Undergraduate Advisory Board
How does your dream to be a teacher tie into your Penn experience?
I started my Urban Education minor and volunteer work my sophomore fall. It just started out because I missed working with kids—I babysat and taught at Hebrew school when I was in high school, and my mom was a teacher, so I always grew up reading and going to museums and libraries. Education was already really important to me, but I never really thought of it as something that I could really invest myself into longterm until I took a class my sophomore year called “Learning from Children.” Our professor Gillian Maimon is a professor in the Graduate School of Education and also a second grade teacher at a local elementary school. We would go into her classroom once a week to observe how she communicated with the kids, how they learned, and the learning types that were most beneficial to them. Learning from her was really what made me realize that teachers are students’ best advocates.
I’d been thinking of doing education policy, but then I saw that she was balancing all this activism while in the classroom and building these one–on–one relationships, which made me realize that was what I wanted to do. Through the Urban Education minor, I’ve been taking a lot of cool classes with some in GSE because I’ve decided to submatriculate. Technically, I’m working on my master’s degree and a teaching certification.
I want to be a teacher because I love learning and I want to make sure students feel empowered and capable, but I also think that on–the–ground work is really important and as a teacher, I get to shape the leaders, the politicians, business people, doctors, lawyers, everyone. I’ve always loved kids and working with them, but I never thought of it as something I wanted to do long term, just because there’s such a stigma about teaching at Penn, which was something that was hard to overcome at first. Going into the classroom with [Maimon] made me realize that being passionate about education is amazing and impactful and not something to feel bad about.