In our Future Teacher series, we feature students enrolled in teacher preparation programs to find out what set them on this career path and why they stayed on it, despite the complex challenges facing the education workforce. This month, we are featuring Davenport.

So the pandemic began. You got burned out in your job. How did that end up turning you on to teaching?

I started looking for other jobs, and I found the one that I currently have, working as a restorative interventionist for Knox County Schools. I started there in October 2020. And then I just got a random email one day about the Grow Your Own program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. They were reaching out to people who had bachelor's degrees who were employed by Knox County Schools, about furthering their educations and possibly becoming teachers.

I didn’t finish the application the first year. But then they sent me the email again in the fall of 2022. That time, I applied. I got in and then enrolled in January. I just finished my first semester of classes, and now I’m in my summer classes.

What was motivating you, at the time, to enroll in this program to get your teaching license?

So when we first met, my now-wife started working at a school nearby. She was starting her career in education, and she was kind of the one pushing me toward teaching. She was like, ‘Hey, you don't like your job. You could be good at this.’ (It’s not that I didn’t like my job. I was just burned out. I had stayed a lot longer than most of the friends I’d made working there.) So she kind of pushed me to go for the job at a school as a restorative interventionist, and I loved it. I still love it, almost three years later. I get to work with different kids all the time.

Read the full article about mental health and teaching by Emily Tate Sullivan at EdSurge.