For December graduates of the college’s educator licensure programs about to embark on their classroom careers, the question was direct.
What type of teachers will they become?
It was something Rachael Mahmood, the 2024 Illinois Teacher of the Year and a 2016 alumna of our Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction program, had once asked of herself.
Mahmood shared her personal story, along with words of wisdom, as the keynote speaker at the Dec. 13 COE New Teacher Send-off in the Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center.
Part of her journey to becoming a fifth-grade teacher at Indian Prairie School District 204’s Georgetown Elementary included the moment in college when she first heard about multicultural education – when “teaching went from a potential profession to a true passion.”
The question, meanwhile, drove her.
“What type of teacher do I want to be? I could be the teacher who validated and affirmed my students’ identities through the lessons that I taught. That became my purpose,” Mahmood said during her talk. “I could become the teacher who saw students’ strengths and let their gifts flourish in our classroom. I could be the type of teacher I wished I had.”
Understanding how school impacted them in positive and negative ways, she told the on-the-cusp teachers, will help them understand how they will answer her question.
She also encouraged her audience to know their “why” stories, something “that will give you the strength to keep going” and “that will guide you in becoming the leader you aspire to be.”
Graduates also received stress-ball red apples, NIU lapel pins and copies of the Teacher’s Creed, which they recited as a group.
