‘My Saving Grace’: TEACH-NOW Grad Finds New Passion for Education
| by Hannah Sparling
Antoinette Wiggins was about to give up on teaching.
She loved her students. She loved her school. She loved everything about her job — but she was struggling to earn her professional teaching certification.
She had already decided: The 2023-24 school year would be her last.
“It was so discouraging,” she said.
Then someone told Wiggins about Moreland University, and she decided to check it out. She could earn her Georgia certification in as little as 9 months. The program was online, so she wouldn’t have to move. And, a huge selling point for Wiggins, she could do her student teaching in her current classroom.
She enrolled in Moreland’s TEACH-NOW Teacher Preparation Certificate Program in May 2023, graduated in January 2024, and earned her professional teaching certification shortly after.
“I tell everybody this when I talk about Moreland: They were my saving grace, because I was about to walk away from education,” she said. “I had the best teacher ever [at Moreland]. She gave me so many strategies, she pushed me, and I excel because of her guidance and leadership.”
Lifelong Connections
Wiggins started her career as a social worker for children with moderate intellectual disabilities. She grew weary of the heavy caseload, however, and decided to shift to teaching, where she could help children in a different way.
She’s been a paraprofessional, a pre-K and elementary school teacher, and a special-education teacher, to name a few. Currently, she’s at Chattahoochee Hills Charter School in Georgia, where she’s an Early Intervention Program teacher.
She loves guiding students and watching them grow, she said, seeing them light up when a new concept clicks. She tells her students’ parents at the start of every year, “We are a team. We are lifelong connected now.”
One of her very first students, from a special-education class, went on to graduate from trade school and now lives and works on his own. He calls her “Mama Wiggins” when he sees her and tells her she hasn’t changed a bit. She tells him to stop growing, because he’s making her feel old.
Another former student plays for the Seattle Seahawks, she said. “Of course, he gave Miss Wiggins tickets.”
Her goal as an educator, she said, is for her students to grow up and find their way, no matter what path they choose.
“I always tell people, you can’t be in it for the income. You have to look for the outcome.”
Career Dreams
TEACH-NOW is 100% online, with live Zoom classes once a week, but Wiggins said she and other members of her cohort regularly met and talked outside of class. They’d “play school,” she said, teaching and critiquing each other to make sure they mastered the concepts.
“I had a great cohort,” she said. “Although we were on different time zones, we sacrificed and met each other.”
The program deepened her pedagogy, she said, and gave her a better understanding of what her job entails. That alone — not to mention the significant salary bump she got when she earned her certification — made it worth the time and effort.
A lot has changed for Wiggins in the past year. Instead of getting ready to give up on teaching, she’s looking forward to building a long and meaningful career. She already has a master’s degree in education, so next on her list is earning a reading certificate so she can become a reading specialist.
She may want to get certified in another state as well, just to keep her options open.
Eventually, her goal is to open her own reading tutoring service.
“Just think,” she said, “if I can teach one student how to read, write, go through informational text — I’m teaching them that for life. Those are the joys. Those are the things I look at as an educator. It’s truly a matter of the heart.”
Earn your professional teaching certification in as little as 9 months with Moreland University’s TEACH-NOW Teacher Preparation Certificate Program. From there, you have the option to add on a master’s degree in just 3 additional months.
