Aspiring Educator Jina Han is our Scholar of the Month

Each month, we feature a new Scholar of the Month to highlight the amazing achievements and stories of our scholarship recipients. 

Her name is Jina Han and she is an aspiring teacher at the Graduate School for Education at Johns Hopkins University.  Jina began her graduate career as a law student and changed course when she stumbled upon the fact that one statistic the government uses in order to make projections for how many jails to build in fifteen years is the result of third grade students’ reading proficiency levels.  Based on research, they determined that third graders who show high reading proficiency are less likely to end up in prison than those students whose reading proficiencies remain far below average academic standards.  It was then when Jina realized that teaching was her true calling.  Jina writes, “Learning this placed into perspective the understanding that the success and failure of society as we know it is essentially in the hands of educators.  I soberly accept this responsibility and desire to give every student an equal chance at securing a stable future through their education.”

Jina maintains a 4.0 GPA.  She is unable to work to help pay for school due to the unpaid teaching internship required by her Master’s program.  However, she does not let the financial obligations deter her from her goal.  She writes, “No amount of success, money, or fame could provide for me what I feel when teaching children.”  Thanks to the scholarship Jina received from us, she is able to concentrate on school rather than an ever-increasing student loan debt.