SARTE Personal Initiative Statement
You are writing this personal initiative statement as part of your application for admission into the teacher education program. You are required to be admitted to teacher education (SARTE) prior to enrolling in 300-400 level education coursework. If all criteria for admission are not currently met, you should seek a provisional admission.
Please read the following information to support your understanding of “personal initiative.” Guiding questions are provided to support your writing of your personal initiative statement. As this will be evaluated as one of the criteria for your admission to teacher education, please be sure your response is thoughtful. It would be best if you first write your statement in Word, providing you access to spelling and grammar check, then paste your final version into your SARTE application. Please try to limit your statement to approximately 2500 characters. Be sure to organize your thoughts prior to writing to assure your statement is clear and concise.
Personal Initiative (PI) has been described as a group of behaviors that an individual executes to self-start a series of actions that will allow him/her to reach goals and complete tasks while showing resiliency in the presence of barriers and setbacks. Personal Initiative is composed of 4 elements:
- Self-starting: the individual sets goals,
- Proactive: the individual has pursued goals,
- Persistent: the individual does not give up easily, and
- Pro-Company: the individual seeks activities/experiences that involve engagement with others.
Purpose and Use: As employers view personal initiative as an important characteristic of employees, MSUM teacher education has included this as one criteria for Selective Retention and Admission (SARTE). To complete this requirement for admission to teacher education, you will need to provide a written statement that describes your Personal Initiative. Remember to include in your statement the four elements of Personal Initiative described above.
These questions may help guide your writing:
- Which of your life experiences have been based on self-direction and goal setting?
- How have you carried through with your goals?
- What obstacles did you confront and how did you overcome these obstacles?
- Did you seek feedback from others when making your goals or following through with your goals? How about when you faced an obstacle?
- How have you shown persistence in achieving your goals?
- How have you engaged with others throughout your life and when attempting to achieve your goals?
- How have these experiences prepared you for the profession of teaching?