TU special education major’s passion fueled by family

By Rebecca Kirkman on January 18, 2022

As a special education major, Dominique Watts wants to advocate for students like her little brother. His experience in a special education program inspired her to go into the profession. 

“Seeing how important it was to have a person on his side that was knowledgeable and could advocate for him and how that could create the trajectory of his educational career was really eye-catching for me,” she says. “I want to be the person in someone's life who advocates for them.”
 
A first-generation college student, Watts transferred to Towson University from Howard Community College because of TU’s diverse student body and reputation for excellence in preparing future educators. Originally interested in speech-language pathology, Watts changed her major after discovering that special education better aligned with her skillset and would enable her to help a wider range of students.
 
Through the EMPOWER program, one of the College of Education’s many multilingual learner initiatives, Watts will enter the workforce with an additional endorsement for teaching English for speakers of other languages (ESOL). She heard about the opportunity through clinical instructor Michelle Pasko. The ESOL endorsement will make her more marketable after graduation, adds Watts, who wants to teach special education at a public middle school.
 
“Towson helped prepare me for that vision,” she says, noting skills she learned in special education and methods classes. She gained hands-on teaching experience last spring through the virtual COE TUtors program as well as her in-person fall internship at Sparrows Point Middle School.

She also found support through the cohort-based model. “Just having the cohort to lean on when I have some questions has been a huge help—a lot of the time they have resources that I didn't know existed.”

So far, Watts’ biggest takeaway is the importance of tailoring her approach to the individual student.

“Including the students in their education is one of the most important things you could do for them,” she says. “And making sure you include their culture because everybody wants to be represented in the classroom.”