Hello, my name is Anea Harris. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am in the Education & Human Development track. I'm a senior, specializing in Teaching & Learning with a focus on Elementary Education. In Wheelock, Everyone ends up graduating with the same Bachelor's in Science for Education & Human Development. And the first two years of the program are set up to give you experience in each of the domains that the college offers.

So you will take the same foundational coursework in classes like deaf studies, teaching and learning, educational design for transformative futures, and some others. And then your junior and senior year you'll specialize in something more specific.

We have a really inclusive and small community, and even after just my first year, I've started to get to know a lot of people really well. And I think that's really helped support me in the classroom because when we do a lot of collaborative assignments or discussions, I feel comfortable talking with people and I also can appreciate how they all have very different perspectives from me and come from lots of different places.

I came into college not knowing that I wanted to be a teacher, and so having courses where I got to interact with different professors that have a variety of different work experience was really important for me and very transformative in my education.

All of the Wheelock faculty who I've encountered so far have been really supportive inside and outside of the classroom. And one of the biggest things I really appreciate about all of them is their willingness to be available to help me one on one.

I'm a part of an undergraduate research program called the Sankofa Scholars, which is basically just to provide opportunities for underrepresented or first generation college students to engage in research with Wheelock faculty. That experience has been amazing. I've just been open to learning about the different inequities within education and also the work being done to solve those inequities.

One of the biggest things that drew me to Wheelock is how flexible the degree is. I can start right away working on Education & Human Development coursework, but there's also lots of opportunity to take classes in any other school at BU, such as a minor in English, which I'm really excited to pursue.

I've gotten to do several pre practicums or opportunities to go into the field and get some experience in the classroom and being in that classroom really taught me on both ends, like what students are like today, but also what teaching is like today and the push for equity and the push for inclusivity in some of these classroom and how real teachers are doing this work.

As I go into the field to become a teacher specifically, I am not just walking and looking at the student as a student in the context of my school or my classroom, I'm looking at the student as a person in the context of their lives. And so I have a way more holistic view of a child as a person and not just a student.