You Must Meet Stacey Chambers!
Once a Child Life Specialist, Stacey Chambers is now a Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments. When Stacey’s stage of life changed, she found herself in need of a new career. Check out Stacey’s inspiring story to see how she created a fulfilling career that brings variety, matches her purpose, and allows for much needed family time.
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Current Career: Teacher of Students with Visual Impairments
Prior Career: Hospital Child Life Specialist
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What is your purpose and passion?
I have always felt a strong passion to be an advocate and supporter for children who have unique needs. I think a strength of mine is being able to bring a voice to those in need, thinking outside of the box to achieve higher outcomes, and injecting fun where you may least expect it.
As a child life specialist in a children’s hospital, I worked many long hours, weekends, and holidays. In anticipation of wanting to have children of my own, I knew that I would prefer a more predictable schedule. Additionally, the pay at the time was not enough to justify the long hours. Lastly, as a child life specialist, I was faced with many devastating situations – children who passed away, children who had lost limbs or family members in a trauma, etc, and my role was to help share the difficult news, explain a diagnosis, and/or help provide emotional support during painful medical procedures. I could feel the toll emotionally that it was taking on me, and I felt that would only increase once I had children of my own.
-I explored options available to me at the University associated with the hospital I worked at. I took some exploratory courses and met with department chairs in a few different areas before I settled on obtaining a teaching degree in the area of Special Education/Visual Disabilities.
-For 2 years, I took 2 classes per semester while working. In order to do this, I moved positions at the hospital to accommodate the course hours. (I worked 6 am – 2:30 pm at the hospital and took a class 4 pm -7 pm 2 days per week.)
– I worked a part time job off and on to supplement the cost of the courses and to save money for my student teaching.
-When it was time to do my student teaching, I left my work at the hospital to teach for a semester unpaid.
-I was also planning a move to a new state, so I obtained a separate teaching certificate for Texas and interviewed for jobs in preparation for a new school calendar.
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