From an early age, Jennifer Krikava knew she wanted to be a teacher. Once she began working at Argo as an English teacher, she knew it was meant to be. She has been working at this high school for 27 years.

Krikava has taught English, writing, and speech classes. Her love for teaching comes from the clever and honest ways her students’ minds think.

Krikava believes writing is essential for life and hopes people continue to value it like she does.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Tell me a bit about yourself.

I’ve been teaching at Argo for 27 years, and this is the only place I have ever taught. I met Argo at a job fair a week before I graduated from University of Illinois, and they asked me to come in for an interview. I came in, they offered me the job and I accepted. This was the only school I interviewed at, so in a way, it was meant to be. I teach English, mostly writing and speech classes.

I had a great English teacher in high school. Her name was Ms. Krasinski. I had her junior and senior year, and she just made me love everything about English. She made me love reading, literature, and writing, and that became the path that I wanted to take.

In what ways do you feel is important for your students to value writing class?

I preach this all the time in class. 
No matter where you go in life, almost any job you pursue, it’s going to be an advantage to be a good writer, to be able to express yourself through writing.

Beyond that, writing is thinking. If you really want to know something well, you write about it. You learn about something through the act of writing about it. I think that is true of ourselves. 
If you journal, or if you just write creative things or things that are an expression of your thoughts and feelings, it helps you process your life, feelings, and experiences.

What do you hope your student’s take from your class?

I hope my students know that I value the effort and the process more than the result. I want my students to know that all of us are works in progress. If they are better tomorrow than where they were today, then they have met a goal and done what they should be doing.

But be open and receptive to all the things that your teachers want to teach you because you never know when in life something will just hit. So just be open to learning. Do not be afraid to be bad at things. 
I feel like a lot of people, me included, have the perfectionist complex where if we cannot be good at something right away, we do not want to do it. But there is so much value in failing, struggling, and getting better from that.

What would you say is the biggest challenge of teaching?  

My job, 27 years ago, was a lot different than it is today. I think that one of the forces changing it is technology. It’s so hard to sell what I’m trying to sell to kids, which is, “Hey, read a book!” or “Hey, write this essay!” when there are so many distractions and other tools at their disposal that provide them shortcuts for not doing those things. It’s too tempting these days to want to take shortcuts. It’s scary that this next generation might be getting further away from those ideals that I grew up with, which was that it is important to be a strong reader, writer, and communicator. It is part of what keeps us human.

I would say, in short, the biggest challenge [of teaching] is technology, and as much as it helps us, it also hurts us.

Was teaching always what you wanted to do?

I think I was always meant to be a teacher. When I was about 8 years old for Christmas, my parents got me, or I should say Santa did… a chalkboard that stood on an easel. I had that setup in my basement, and I would have my friends come over. We would play school, and I would be the teacher. Or if my friends were not there, my stuffed animals would be my students.

I always knew I wanted to teach.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to anyone reading this?

My best advice is, don’t sell yourself short. 
Trust yourself. Trust that what you have to say through your writing is so much more inventive, creative, sharp and interesting than anything AI could ever produce.

So, just do it yourself.