Scholarship Winner Sarah Hyatt

Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon

I grew up in a rural, low-income community and school in Iowa where systemic under-resourcing was the norm. The teacher turnover rate was high; I had a different science teacher every year. For example, when I took physics, the school couldn’t find a science teacher so they had to hire a social studies teacher. He told our class that he didn’t know anything about physics, so we mostly had to Google information on our own. My school also didn’t offer AP courses or higher level math classes, and at home, we didn’t always have internet, so I walked to the local library to do my online homework.

These experiences helped shape my desire to enter the teaching profession, to provide better opportunities, understanding, and support to low-income students and communities. I had to keep up a strong work ethic to make it through my undergraduate program in psychology and pay for my own education. For example, during my senior year, I maintained high academic achievement with a full-time course load, a work-study job, working every weekend as a hospital housekeeper, and engaging in a school counseling internship at a middle school where I further saw how poverty directly impacts students’ ability to learn and function at school.

Receiving this scholarship would help make graduate education financially possible for me as I start a Master’s in Teaching program this summer, allowing me to fully commit to becoming the kind of teacher I want to be.