Geneva College 2015 graduate Jennie Smith is joining Teach for America’s teaching corps to serve as a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee. She has made a two-year commitment to serve in the nonprofit program designed to help underprivileged children throughout the country by equipping college students and graduates to provide the children with a better education.
“I have always felt that God wanted me to work with individuals with special needs and I was so sure that this was the field God wanted me to pursue,” she said.
As a student, Smith interned at the disability ministry Joni and Friends in California. It was there that she realized her life’s call to enter a field that joined education and work with the disabled. “I learned about the need for earlier support for individuals with special needs,” she said. “An earlier intervention means that the individuals with special needs are most likely to succeed and live life to their fullest potential, which means a lessened need for services later on in life. The best place for early intervention to occur is in the school system, before the individuals age out and have limited options available.”
Smith is graduating with degrees in missions and humans services. Through Teach for America’s alternative certification program, she will receive certification to teach elementary from grades K-8, as well as special education from grades K-12 in the state of Tennessee.
“Through Geneva’s human services and missions programs, I have learned biblical support for working with those the rest of the world seems to forget. Teach for America works in lower income and often less served areas of the United States. They work to even the playing field by offering students in these communities a chance through education. That mission and that vision is one that I not only agree with but feel called to,” added Smith
As she looks forward to life after graduation, Smith also looks back to how her education at Geneva helped prepare her to make a difference. “I believe my education at Geneva has prepared me to be a Christian in a secular world,” she explained. “I have learned the importance of understanding who we are in Christ and how that will impact how we relate to others.”
Smith concluded, “My education at Geneva has taught me about myself. It has shown me that I am called to work with individuals with special needs, and it has shown me that this population is in need of services. It has shown me that I have something to offer. Above all that, my education has taught me that regardless of what I may try to do to improve the lives of others, ultimately, there is only One who can truly give life to these individuals. It is my duty and calling to reflect Him in all that I do.”
Geneva College invites students to step forward and leap ahead with an academically excellent, Christ-centered and affordable education. Offering nearly 40 undergraduate majors, Adult Degree Programs with fully online and campus-based options, and high-demand advanced graduate degrees, Geneva's programs are recognized for their high quality. U.S. News & World Report ranks Geneva as a Top 10 Best Value with one of the Top 100 engineering programs in the nation. Adhering to the inerrancy of Scripture, a Geneva education is grounded in God’s word as well as in a core curriculum designed to prepare students vocationally to think, write and communicate well in today’s world.
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