Jeremy Evans

From Indiana to California, Personal Trainer to Credential Candidate, Jeremy Evans pursues his goal of engaging others in the joy of learning.

My name is Jeremy Evans, I am currently a Single Subjects candidate in the field of Social Sciences at UCI. I was born and raised in the wonderful state of Indiana and attended Indiana University in Bloomington, where I graduated in 2003 with a double major in Psychology and History. My entire family still lives in Indiana, and although I do miss it very much and cherish the time when I am back at home, I love being in the state of California and being exposed to the opportunity and diversity the area has to offer.

After graduating from IU, I became a certified personal trainer. Since the people in Indiana aren't exactly clamoring to be personally trained, I took my services to LA and have been working for the last three years as a private trainer. It has been a wonderful experience, and the skills and talents I've acquired through training have really aided me with high school students during my field work observations.

Even though I've been working as a trainer, I've always known that I would become a teacher. I guess in part that belief has stemmed from my life experience. Both of my parents are deaf, and the experiences they had in education really made me want to pursue teaching as a career. They were often ignored, and as a result, lost interest in school. However, they taught me so much, and I aim to shape my own teachings with the lessons I learned from them. I want to make sure that no matter what kind of student I have, I am trying my best to reach them all through making my teaching salient to them as people, not just as students. Also, I always have loved teaching others sign language, and now I want to take my love of history and attempt to make high school students love it as well.

Taking part in this teacher preparatory program at UCI has been a wonderful, yet extremely challenging, experience so far. I chose UCI because of its great reputation in producing prepared, confident teachers, something that everyone I spoke to before I made my decision confirmed. I am developing every day in preparation, and my professors at UCI continue to build my fellow classmates and me into the best that any school would be lucky to acquire. One of the best results from the program is also the camaraderie I've had with my fellow students, working on collaborative learning projects, sharing our experiences in fieldwork, and groaning collectively when presented with additional tasks. Though it's been tough, it shouldn't be any other way, and we will be better for it once we've completed the program. My favorite class and professor so far has been Professor Oscar Jimenez Castellanos, who teaches ED347: Foundations of Equity and Diversity for Secondary School Teachers. He is such a great role model to have as a professor, and it is extremely apparent through his relations with us as his students how much he cares and the respect he possesses.

One day I would love to be a secondary History or English teacher, and using my love for athletics, I am also looking forward to being a coach, in tennis, swimming, or volleyball, sports that I played throughout high school. Now that I live in SoCal, I play beach volleyball every weekend. It's wonderful to call the family back in Indiana in December and tell them I'm at the volleyball nets in Huntington Beach, while they're shoveling themselves out from the latest snowstorm. I also love to travel, and South America has been my latest venture. In the last two years, I've been to Machu Picchu in Peru, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil, and Thanksgiving 2007, kite surfing and snorkeling in Los Roques, an archipelago off the coast of Venezuela. Although I do enjoy the quiet moments, I love to get out and explore, and I want to spark that same drive and fire within my students, whatever their interests may be.

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