First-year teacher Miah Phalen prepares to welcome students
First-year teacher Miah Phalen prepares to welcome students
For Miah Phalen, this back-to-school season is special. For the first time in many years, she’s not starting a new academic year as a student. This year, she’s the teacher, leading her own classroom at Weber Elementary School in Iowa City.
“I got my roster to look at my kids and see their pictures,” she said. “That was a surreal moment of seeing their faces and knowing these are my first students, and they'll definitely stick with me forever.”
Phalen is using her elementary education degree and special education minor from the University of Northern Iowa to teach K-3 special education. It was the first job she applied for, her first choice and her first job offer that came the day after she interviewed.
When her principal, who also happens to be a UNI alum, offered the job, she was pleasantly surprised to receive an offer so promptly.
“Finding out I got the job was just like the most incredible feeling, knowing that something that I dreamed of and worked toward for years and years was finally becoming a reality.”
Phalen leveraged her frequent, diverse experiences inside real classrooms as a UNI student during her interview with the Iowa City Community School District.
“It was important for me to convey that I had a lot of valuable field experience at UNI that prepared me to come in and teach,” she said. “I had been at a variety of schools and worked with diverse student populations and different needs. Those frequent field experiences and my coursework helped me grow as an educator. I feel a lot more confident in my knowledge and my different strategies that I have and tools I can use going into this job.”
Although the classroom experience might be the biggest competitive advantage for Phalen as a new grad, it’s not the only one. She believes her courses dedicated to classroom management, taught by professors who truly engaged with her, and her leadership experience with UNI Dance Marathon also helped set her apart.
Even when she was student teaching in her hometown of Dubuque, Phalen’s mentor teacher remarked on the longstanding success of UNI students in her classroom.
“When you tell someone that you went to UNI, that comes with the reputation of people knowing it's a strong teaching school," she said. “People have confidence in you and your abilities when they know that you got your education at UNI. So I'm glad to be able to say that I did.”
Getting into so many classrooms as an undergrad showed her that the job she’d been dreaming about her whole life was truly going to be the best fit for her.
“For as long as I can remember, I have loved learning,” said Phalen. “I loved school as a little kid. I couldn't wait to start school when my older sisters were in school. My mom was a special education teacher. My grandma was a teacher. It's definitely something that's in my family. I was surrounded by it growing up, and then as I got older, I just knew I loved working with kids.”
Phalen’s time at UNI came before the university created a dedicated special and inclusive education degree, but that didn’t stop her from realizing that she wanted to end up teaching this area. Her special education placements were the ones she enjoyed the most.
“I would walk into those classrooms and work with those students, and I was like, ‘This is the place for me,’” she said. “So when I was looking for jobs, my priority was special education, and I'm glad to have gotten that.”
Phalen is ready to take all she learned from UNI and put it into action. She’s created a colorful, welcoming classroom where she hopes to create relationships with each of her new students.
“I am most looking forward to just building relationships with my students,” she said. “That is the most important thing to me about this career is the relationships I build with my kids, so I can’t wait to meet them and start to get to know them and just have fun with them.”
