My first job (teaching or otherwise) revolved around my first love fitness. As a very athletic child and teenager, I naturally got into the gym life pretty quickly in college and fell in love with challenging myself physically. I first got a job cleaning up weights and helping to maintain gym at my college. In between my sophomore and junior year of college I got a slightly more "real" job at a huge health club in NY. I soon became a certified personal trainer and functioned in several roles at Club Fit - truly loving every minute of it and creating a home there for me. I realized eventually that trying to make a living as a personal trainer is somewhere between extremely difficult and almost impossible. With a BA in Psychology and a knack for working with kids, I decided teaching might be the way to go. All I heard at that time, however, was that "gym teacher" (as most people still refer to the position) jobs are declining in number and it is extremely difficult to get into. I also wasn't quite as outgoing as I am now, so running a big gym class didn't seem like the best fit for me. I was a math whiz in school and had taken a ton of math in college already, so that was the natural second choice. I quickly got a job as a teaching assistant to a math teacher in a special ed system. Eventually I completed my certification requirements and got a full time teaching job as a special ed math teacher at a residential school for troubled youth. I moved to CA a year and a half later and soon got a job as a special ed resource teacher at another alternative school. This is where I'm at now....
I am ready, however, to come full circle and get back to fitness - only now with a much better idea of what I want to do, how to make it work, and with a pretty fuller background in educational experiences. I want to continue teaching, but I feel most passionate about fitness and sports. I'm excited to preach physical education for LIFE.
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