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Having had summer jobs since age fourteen and working year-round since age eighteen,
I've experienced a number of different job situations in the past several years. Beginning as a
waitress, I've been a hostess, bus girl, dishwasher, receptionist, dispatcher, sign-maker, sales
associate, plant nursery worker, grounds crew member, and carpenter. These many positions
have required me to work with individuals with varied expectations and characteristics in a range
of situations. For instance, when working in theatre scene shops, I collaborated with a small
crew on very specific tasks. At my restaurant jobs, I was asked to interact with dozens of
customers and employees while shifting roles several times a day, and, during my time at a tree
nursery and garden center, I worked alone and reported to a supervisor upon completing projects.
These various situations have improved my skills and sensitivity when interacting with people
and have increased my ability to work alone or in groups. Frequently, I have had two jobs at a
time and have always worked part-time while attending college. As such, I have become
efficient at managing my time and energy toward thorough completion of varied daily tasks.
As an undergraduate, I attended Denison University, a small, liberal arts college in Ohio.
The range of general education requirements at Denison exposed me to a number of academic
areas that I plan to incorporate into my teaching of English such as philosophy, communications,
sociology, and history. For example, I believe that reading, listening, writing, speaking, and
viewing are all essential to the Language Arts classroom and that these activities should occur
regarding not isolated literary texts but texts and ideas in relationship to the past, present, and
future world of which the students are a part. As such, my course in mass communications will
aid me in encouraging my classes to consider questions of presentation and representation in
literature, entertainment, politics, and history. It will help us to explore the context of literary
texts and their place in the worlds of the authors.
An English and education double-major with a theatre minor, I had planned to finish my
education degree and license during a ninth semester at Denison; however, an unexpected change
in the course of my studies occurred when I heard about Wake Forest University's Master
Teacher Fellows Program. Learning of this opportunity in October of my senior year when I
hadn't planned to attend graduate school, I was rushed to take the GRE and get my application
materials together. My acceptance to the program presented me with the opportunity to
complete an M.A.Ed. in six months more time than I would have completed a B.A. in education.
Now midway through the program, I’m quite pleased with my decision to attend. Having been
introduced to educational concepts twice in different contexts and with different professors has
strengthened my ideas and understanding of them in a way that neither program could have done
alone. My student-teaching semester is now less than a month away, and I’m quite nervous and
excited about all that I’ll learn as I teach.
The extensive requirements of education majors in Ohio have given me a background
that covers a number of different areas of English while my minor in theatre and work in the
scene shop have prepared me for teaching drama. In addition, the research element and strong
English methods training I have received at Wake Forest have provided me with many ideas
about the planning, execution, and management of lessons in the English classroom. Combined,
my work and educational experiences bring me to the beginning of my teaching career as a hardworking,
creative, organized, and eager person who will seek to engage in dialogue with her
colleagues in order to change her teaching style for the better and who wishes to infect her
students with the desire to pursue new ideas and affect the world around them.