Engineer to Teacher

Sara Barber relishes standing before a class and seeing students’ eyes light up: "Something clicks, and you know they really get it. It’s the best feeling in the world – that you’ve taught them something that they’ll be able to use in the future."

A junior math major and teachHOUSTON participant, Sara has had an affinity for math for as long as she can remember and enjoyed explaining its complexities to fellow classmates. But she entered UH to study civil engineering before deciding on teaching as a career.

Completing her third teaching experience – at Austin High School in Sugar Land – she expects to graduate in 2010 with little debt thanks to a teachHOUSTON scholarship and a part-time job in the teachHOUSTON office. Although Sara worked at a cleaners during high school in Beaumont, her mother, who is single, paid for most of her college expenses because she wanted her daughter to focus on her studies. "It’s been a struggle," Sara says. "This scholarship definitely helped a lot."

Gaining classroom experience right away to know if you like teaching and to learn from your mistakes, as well as the continued support during the first years out of college, are benefits of teachHOUSTON, she says, adding, "I feel like I’m learning to be a really good teacher."