My name is Malaki Fleming and I am a 3rd year teacher candidate for middle childhood in ELA and Social Studies at The University of Akron. I was born and have grew up my entire life in the Buckeye state and have grown to love my state, maybe not for the weather, but for everything that I went through, grew through, and became here. I was highly influenced by my teachers and family from my early elementary school days that I would survive the situations that surround me. Most people say that they have a teacher or maybe two teachers that believed in them, but I had every teacher encourage and see something in me and that something took me years to realize. I don’t say that to boast or gloat about the fact that I had people to support and believe in me, but to lay the foundation to the message that until you believe in yourself, hold yourself to high standards, and invest in yourself you can’t see the potential that you have. High School is when I started to invest in myself and my future and I started taking on leadership roles within my school, investing and volunteering in my community, and being the role model for younger family members and kids in my community that I wanted when I was growing up. I went to an Early College High School, but it truly lacked diversity. I created a proposal for a “Welcome Committee” for our school and this committee would serve the purpose of going into the community and trying to get students from different racial and financial backgrounds to come to our school and show them that the idea of college and higher learning was not such a farfetched one. When I reflect on my past, creating and serving as the President of that committee is one of the highlights and the idea that I was able to expand what opportunity those kids felt like that had for their future.
My life now is something that I didn’t and could have never imagined. I am nearly done with completing my 3rd year of college and finding ways to continuously work to improve myself and the foundation for my future. At the conclusion of this semester, I will have been in over 100 hours in various field placement through my coursework at Uakron and gained experience and grown my professional skill set because of it. My involvement on campus continues to find ways to grow and as I find new ways that I can make a difference and a positive impact on the community that I am a part of. I serve as an Associate Justice on the University of Akron’s Undergraduate Student Government judicial branch, an intern for the Uakron school of education literacy center, a member of the Akron Council of Education Students, volunteer with ServeAkron, serve of Uakron physical facilities committee, campus dining experience committee, and volunteer with Akron food bank and other organizations throughout the city of Akron. In all my positions I try to find a way to use my position to speak for future students, the marginalized community, and speak on issues that are impacting the everyday life of students, APS students, and people in the community.
More. That singular word is how I frame my future. I know that my mission is to do good and work with people, so with everything that I do I want to continue to do it and then more. I learned some time ago that even though I should plan for how I want my future to be and take steps to reach those goals; you can never plan for life to life. If I had stuck to the plan of my future that I created even two years ago I would not be where I am today and wouldn’t have become the person I have. I want to continue to find more ways to get involved, more ways to improve my community in any way, and more ways to help. More.
Recognize Education And Learning 