About Me:

I am currently working on my undergraduate degree at the University of South Alabama in Secondary Education/ English Language Arts. My goal is to graduate in the Spring of 2012. I have experience coaching baseball and football in both the Mobile County and Saraland City school systems. At W.P. Davidson High School, I spent three years as varsity assistant baseball coach, as well as two years worth of experience as an assistant coach on the freshman football team. In the spring of 2010, I started my first year as junior varsity assistant coach in the Saraland school system. My goal is to be the best possible educator I can be, in the classroom and on the field.

My Long Term Goals

I feel like goal setting is an important process for anyone who wants to achieve success. My goals for the long term as an educator involve both academics and athletics. Academically, I want to be as reliable and efficient of an educator as I possibly can. I would like to be a part of groundbreaking curricula that re-examine the way we teach, especially in the field of English. I want to be a part of an academic community that constantly seeks to provide the highest standard of education that we possibly can for our students. Investing in the education of our future generations is one of the most important things we can do as a country and a society.

In terms of athletics, I plan to continue gaining experience and maturing as a coach. I would like to at some point be a head varsity baseball coach, which will likely take some time for me to achieve. I am fairly new to the world of football coaching, so I want to gain more knowledge and experience about the game. My ultimate goal is simple however: to be a part of a state championship team. Winning a state championship is the precipice of coaching high school. I want to mold student athletes who will become productive citizens.

Why I Want to Teach

I guess you could say that teaching is in my blood. My dad, Dr. A.W. Faris Sr., taught exercise physiology and kinesiology for twenty five years at South Alabama. My mom also spent time as a teacher in the Mobile County school system. I didn't really know that I wanted to be a teacher until I was about twenty. When I started coaching, I discovered that I have a talent for teaching and that I also really enjoy the education process. I feel that a career in teaching offers rewards that cannot be bought with money. I feel like it is my best talent, and the one that is also the most useful to others.

I also feel it is important for any prospective teacher to be realistic with their expectations. The world is not perfect, and educators have to go through difficult and upsetting situations as well. Everything is not going to go precisely according to plan, and I understand and accept that challenge. I think that the challenges are actually a big part of why I want to be a teacher.

A Few Thoughts on English

I am very passionate about English as a subject. I believe that it is imperative, as a member of the newest generation of teachers, that I am able to actively engage my students in material. Writing and literacy skills are probably the strongest indicator of the level of success in life someone is likely to have. High school English teachers are on the forefront of the battle to teach students to become analytical readers and writers. I am interested in exploring new forms of media to teach my students, especially if these media are more interesting and exciting for students. As long as they learn the literacy skills that I aim to teach them, I think technology can be a contributor.

Blogging happens to be an area that I am particularly interested in as of now. Studies show that students write their best work on material that they know will be published. With blogging, students are not only publishing their work but sharing it with the world; students from classrooms spanning the globe can read and respond to my students work. Blogging also allows students the capability of using pictures, sound clips, video clips, voice threads, and various other tools to accompany their work. I expect to deal with some availability issues for technology in my classroom, but I feel that eventually it will be a viable and reasonable option in my class.

How I Coach

As I player, I always played for good coaches: Andy Robbins at St.Paul's, Rick Patterson, and Greg Connor at Bishop State. I believe in a "hard nosed" style that demands a high standard of achievement from my players. As a coach, I've been fortunate enough to also work with good coaches like Andrew Jordan and Fred Riley at W.P. Davidson. They have been very good role models for me as a young coach. I am a huge believer in the term "student athlete" and emphasize that "student" comes first to my players. I believe that academic achievement is the most important thing for all of my players to accomplish. I believe that sports teach life lessons that transcend the fields they are played on.

In my career thus far, I have been lucky enough to be a part of some pretty good teams. In 2008, my first year as a football assistant on the freshman team at Davidson, I got to be a around a varsity team that made it to the 6A A.H.S.A.A. state semi-finals. In 2009, I returned to Davidson for a memorable year. Davidson won the 6A Region 1 title and made it to the third round of the playoffs. As a baseball coach, in 2008 I was varsity assistant on the first Davidson team to make the state playoffs in twenty years. In my first year coaching baseball in the Saraland school system, I assisted a middle school team that was co-area champions.

How I Plan to Teach

As of right now, I do not have any real classroom experience. So, for now this post can only be speculative but at least I have some ideas. I want my classroom to be a place that students don't dread attending. I plan to be a tough but fair disciplinarian. I want to create and foster a community of learners that actively participates in the educational process. I want to be on the cutting edge of how English classes are taught in the United States. If possible, I would like to explore technology as an aid for both me and my students. I will hold myself and my students to a high standard of achievement. In the end, my ultimate goal is to create critical thinking students, who analyze from a critical viewpoint that seeks reliable validation for all of their assertions. I am a big believer in the concept of people becoming "life-long learners" who seek knowledge and information out their whole lives.

My Educational Background

I graduated in 2004 from St. Paul's Episcopal High School. In the 2004-2005 school year, I attended Bishop State Community College on a baseball scholarship. In the fall of '05, I transferred to the University of South Alabama. After running into the typical financial woes of college students, I was forced to put college on hold after the fall semester of '06. For the next two years, I worked manual labor in a steel fabrication shop. This experience had a definite impact on my personal work ethic and desire to finish college. I now want to help others reach their academic goals. I am a big believer that having an education is the ultimate ticket to prosperity and freedom. I want to have an influence on my students that will last a life time. I want to be able to pass them on the streets years after I have taught them and be able to have meaningful conversation about how what they learned in school helped them succeed in life.