Though I’ve included reasoning for my site title on my site info page, I think it would do some good to explain myself as a Certified Pacifist and why it applies, considering this as a creative writing and pre-education page.

I am a Certified Pacifist because I believe in a world for peace. I know it’s not going to happen in my lifetime, but I’ll be gosh-darned if I don’t try.

In trying to think about my best mode of action, teaching, particularly teaching English, came across my plate. And looking at it, considering what I could do with it, I realized that becoming a teacher would be an incredible way to create little peace activist minions right out of my own classroom.

I came up with the phrase several years ago and thought it would be a really cool name for a website, or blog, whatever… look what I have now! A blog! And a site.. perfect if you ask me. My hopes for this site are to grow it as a blog that not only I can use as a professional portfolio for potential employers, but to also use it beyond just showing what I can do. I want to be able to use the blog postings as a means by which I can show my personal growth over the course of completing undergrad and then grad school, how my philosophy for teaching changes or is built up, and things I find while procrastinating on YouTube about education in the US (and elsewhere). If this is going to be a site that shows who I am, if nothing else it will be something my readers could spend hours reading, a place to go when you want to procrastinate while also being productive, much like when I watch TED talks for fun.

The Certified Pacifist is a character ready to teach the youth of the US. I would hope it’s a certification carried by most of the educators already. If not, it should be. Adults are built in the classroom.

There are a select few teens and young adults who manage to be born built to absorb information like a sponge and spit it back out like a broken printer, but the vast majority of students don’t have this abnormal gift and can’t handle the stresses of it. There’s a demand for adults in the work force with experience– fewer and fewer employers want to see hefty college degrees and more with experience in fields which they need education to get into. The paradox only works to continue the impossible realm of excluding “abnormal learners” from entering into fields that genuinely interest them.

I feel comfortable asserting that the vast majority of teachers get into the profession not for the pay, but rather for the love of a subject they want to impart upon the youth of the U.S. I feel that English is an incredible subject with the power to change the lives and futures of countless youth. But with an education system that is geared towards creating uniform children who ‘don’t get left behind’, the vast majority are getting left behind. Memorization works wonders on kids under intense amounts of pressure to be the exact same as the student next to them.

Professor John Boyer of Virginia Tech gave an interesting TED talk regarding this very dilemma in today’s education system. Take the time to watch it, he’s surely got a point.

More Passion, Less Pedagogy: John Boyer at TEDxVirginiaTech