Part of our goal at Imprint is to document the journeys of all types of people becoming educators. In our debut post, we sat down with Cameron Yang, design student turned teaching candidate.
Cam, tell us about what drew you to design, why you shifted to education, and what similarities you might see between the two fields.
I first went into design because I’m a visual person. During school I worked on several short films, but ultimately learned design was more a hobby than a job for me. I started thinking about what I wanted to do instead. I knew I wanted to be involved with some sort of artform. I loved working with kids. I realized that the English language and literature are an art all their own and there’s a ton of potential to make positive impact in it since it’s spoken everywhere. Now I’m a
Secondary Education teaching candidate with a focus in English.
Many of us have stories of teachers who really made an impact on us (dare we say, imprinted). Who are those teachers for you?
I didn’t really start connecting more with teachers until high school. Certain classes allowed for more freedom and expression than others. Math and science have one concrete answer, so there wasn’t much room for failure or exploration there. Even social studies requires you to hold really specific knowledge.
Then I took a film class and I found this huge space to create in. It was a way to bring all these courses together and have experiential learning. I could experiment and learn through my own trial and error. I started making a lot of films because of that.
Guidance counselors also provided a lot of emotional support in my education.
How do you want to imprint on your future students?
I want to meet students where they’re at. This generation loves technology, so I want to integrate that into my lessons. I also want to bring art into my curriculum and challenge kids to think about content with a design lens.
