My Journey to Becoming a Certified Family Life Educator

By Jessica Estrella

My name is Jessica Estrella, and I am a Master’s student majoring in Child Development at TWU. I began my graduate school studies in the fall of 2011 and I have one more year to complete my coursework. My personal goal for after the conclusion of this degree is to become a CertifiedFamily Life Educator. I decided to pursue my graduate degree in Child Development and pursue my CFLE for a variety of reasons. I have grown up in a tight-knit family and have always viewed my family as an extremely important aspect in my life. The classes that I have taken have further shown me how family dynamics change and adapt over time. I have also known that somehow during my career I have wanted to help others.                                          

During my time so far in graduate school, I have found several areas to be helpful to me regarding my degree and learning more about family life education. I have found that being involved in student organizations to be highly helpful. These organizations have provided me a way to network, as well as hearing presentations from various individuals in the field of family sciences. I have also learned that collaborating with others is an extremely helpful aspect in school and I can see myself collaborating a great deal as a family life educator. In addition to student organizations, being a member of national organizations in the field of family sciences has been highly beneficial to me as well. I have been a member of the National Council on Family Relations since the fall of 2011. This has been a wonderful organization to be involved in and I have especially liked reading the quarterly newsletters regarding the field of family sciences.  

I started using Twitter in January of this year. One of my goals for joining Twitter was to be able to connect with other CFLE’s and finding new ways to connect with others. In the few short months that I have been using Twitter, I have grown to love it and have found it to be very useful in my daily life. I hope to continue to use Twitter to connect with others as I continue on in my journey to becoming a CFLE.   

About the author: Jessica Estrella is a graduate student at Texas Woman’s University where she is majoring in Child Development. Jessica is originally from Friendswood Texas, and has been going to school and living in the north Texas area for the past seven years. She graduated high school in 2004 and spent her first two years of college at San Jacinto Community College where she was a music student. In the fall of 2006, Jessica transferred to Texas Woman’s University. In May of 2010, she received her Bachelor’s degree from Texas Woman’s University in Music Therapy.