Chloe Woodruff
Age: 23
Occupation: Third grade teacher
Location: Frankfort, Indiana
Chloe was one of my role models before I even met her. She started the first collegiate club of the teacher’s sorority, Alpha Delta Kappa. Alpha Delta Kappa is an organization of women educators that focuses on spreading world understanding, altruism, and educational excellence around the globe. This organization is present in several nations including the United States, Canada, Australia, and Mexico and its members do work to change their local and global communities every day. Take a look at their work here! Chloe took the initiative to take this amazing organization for veteran and retired educators and open it up to pre-service teachers of all genders at the college level. I am the proud founder of the Colorado State University ADKCC chapter and I could have never gotten where I am without Chloe’s work. I got the chance to meet her at the 2019 Alpha Delta Kappa International Convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota this past July and she taught me so much about what it means to be an educator and what it means to be an ADKCC member. Take a look:
“What was your school experience like growing up?”
“Like most kids, I had good and bad experiences with school growing up. I had problems with my fine motor skills that made my kindergarten teacher want to hold me back because I did not hold my pencil correctly etc. My parents did a very good job at keeping this information from me until I was older but I often wondered why other students got to do all these fun stations while I had to sit and do stress-ball exercises. I was extremely lucky to have the same teacher for second and third grade! Mrs. Morris made school fun. We were constantly laughing at her read alouds and playing fun games. She had a couch in her classroom and was one of the only teachers who did. We would sit on it while she read ghost stories with a flashlight. She truly made me feel special and I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. It really has come full circle because now I am the third grade teacher with the couch in my room.”
“Do you think this experience has molded your decision to become an educator?”
“Even from a young age I knew I wanted to be a teacher. You could find me teaching my stuffed animals or my younger brother if he would cooperate. I honestly feel I was born to be a teacher. I do often wonder if I wouldn’t have had teachers like Mrs.Morris who truly cared and valued me if I would have started to not like school and chose something different. I do feel that having teachers who care about you and value you makes all the difference!”
“What inspired you to start the Ball State ADKCC?”
“In May of 2015 I was called by Lynette Varner. Lynette had been my professor during my first spring semester at Ball State. She told me she had just been at an international teaching honorary meeting and wanted to start a collegiate club that was associated with it. At that time I really had no clue what any of this meant. I really valued Mrs. Varner and thought if it was anything she was involved in it had to be an amazing opportunity so I said yes to be the founding President and it all went from there.”
“What does the ADKCC mean to you?”
“ADKCC really was the project I put my heart and soul into during college. It wasn’t easy by any means. I can still distinctly remember standing waiting for the first meeting just praying one person would show up. The first two years of being the founding President had a lot of challenges but more rewards. It was an opportunity to have a lot of my friends from classes, my social sorority, other clubs I was involved in all in one place. It was truly rewarding to see all my friends from different places become friends with each other.
To me ADKCC means friendship. ADKCC also gave me a place to become the leader I had always wanted to be but never knew if I could. I had to conquer a lot of new things as the president such as being able to give an elevator pitch about the club anywhere and everywhere I went. I also had to do a lot of public speaking to my peers and to Alpha Delta Kappa chapters. Eventually it also led to me learning how to give professional presentations and speeches at state, regional, and international conferences and conventions. All of these skills were not things that came easy but because of them I was very confident when the big day came and I finally had my first teaching interview!”
“How has your experience in this organization shaped your career?”
“Wow! This experience has truly given me the confidence that I needed in myself to go far as a teacher. Anytime I am around a group of ADK women I always leave feeling better about myself than when I walked in the door. Not only was I blessed being able to be a part of this amazing organization but I was also able to join a chapter of ADK last February. My Kokomo Tau sisters always make me feel special and valued even though I am the youngest in the group. They always make sure to go out of their way to see if I need anything and check in on me and I know that this is just the beginning of another chapter of my life that has ADK in it.”
