Year 3

This project, which is characterized by all three of these artifacts, came from my opportunity to be a TA with Dr. Ingwerson for her ENGL 257: Grammar and Style course. As the TA, I was in charge of grading homework, keeping attendance, assisting in instruction during class, and offering a study hour once a week. During this experience, I felt like I had agency as an educator, allowing me to develop communication and instructional skills with my students by addressing each of their individual needs.

While working with Dr. Ingwerson, I proposed redesigning parts of her curriculum so that I could teach descriptivist grammar to 9th grade students. I proposed each of the standards that I would use to assess my students' growth as well as which materials would be beneficial and why. As I was developing this unit plan, Drury University announced our first ever Fusion Day, where we could present and discuss all current research and projects being developed by students. This was an exciting opportunity, and Dr. Ingwerson strongly encouraged me to pursue it, so I developed some of the examples and a quiz that I had planned on using during the unit plan.

My primary aim for this lesson plan was to introduce 9th grade students to the concept of grammar from this linguistic perspective, allowing them to invite themselves and their language experiences into the content. The "Needs X-ed" diagram presents the complexity, and more importantly, the validity, of variances in the English language between dialects. In the unit plan itself, I use several artifacts, like Spanglish by Ilan Stevans and Should Writers Use They Own English by Vershawn Ashanti to develop the same understanding from English's correlate languages. In a way, this project want from a passion project to a more-informed continuation of my Linguistic Oppression in English Education presentation from my Sophomore year.

Drury University does not offer a linguistics program, but they do offer a surprising amount of opportunities to learn about language and to experiment with the topic of linguistics. This project presents these opportunities as well as my budding passion for the topic. In fact, it would not surprise me if this project followed me into my future graduate school programs.

My third year at Drury University was characterized by a lot of opportunities. One of the most abundant sources of opportunities was the theatre department, once again. As I mentioned during my second year, I had the opportunity to be a part of the scenic design team for Drury University's production of Amelie. The production of that set is characterized by the bottom right photo, which depicts one of the middle stages of the process. Here, we have built the bones of the set and are currently in the process of adding details, such as the functioning lampposts and cafe decal on the inside of the middle section. During this process, it was my job to assist our guest designer, Doug McKenzie, and to advocate for his design as other theatre practicum students joined us as we built the set. This position was was a great opportunity to develop my skills as a collaborator, both as a leader and a member of the design team, which is an opportunity that I had never held before.

The next opportunity that I was able to take advantage of was a return to acting. This time, however, was not on a stage, it was on camera and in a silent film. This process was challenging. I had to relearn how to act as I typically relied on the energy of a live audience. I also had to learn how to portray a character's thoughts without speaking. Fortunately, I had a great cast and a supportive crew to work with. Once we started filming, the environment that we created provided fertile grounds for persistent improvement and feedback, which allowed for the creation of a powerful short film. This was also the first film that any of us had ever created!

The final opportunity was offered to me by two Fusion Grant recipients who wanted to use their award to create a production of The Mad Ones, which is an off-broadway musical that explores grief. The recipients asked if I wanted to be their lead stage manager. I wanted to explore this side of theatre again, I was happy to say yes. Throughout this process, I grew more familiar with the technical side of theatre as I collaborated with the directors, the actors, the designers, and my technicians to determine the most efficient and effective ways to address each of the productions needs. This included developing clear modes of communication between each party, carrying out any requests that they have, and solving any problems that arise. These duties carried through into show nights, where I would call each of the technical cues and monitor the acting space to ensure that each cue was carried out as needed.

Each of these opportunities contributed to my love of theatre as well as my skills as a teammate and collaborator. Although these were some of my final contributions to theatre, these experiences will persevere to my career as an educator and scholar.

As an education major, I planned on student teaching during the Spring of my final year at Drury University. As the Senior Seminar for English majors is only offered in the Spring, I had the opportunity to take this course a year early. This course was designed to provide English and Writing majors with a final delve into each of the topics that we had studied during the previous four years as well as an opportunity to read some works that we may not have had the chance to read academically as well as some of the critical discussions surrounding them. Most importantly, this course also gave us the opportunity to explore our own criticisms.

During my second year, Drury Theatre produced a show called God's Ear, which is a piece that explores the dynamics of a mourning family through verse. Due to this, the piece is heavily encrypted, lending itself to a multitude of rewarding readings and critical approaches. For this piece, I leaned most heavily to Feminist theory to gain a better understanding of the male gaze. Specifically, I wanted to analyze how it impacts men, which provided an opportunity to analyze the male gaze as a part of the symbolic order.

This was a difficult project to develop as this piece lends itself to a Feminist critique cleanly, providing innumerable examples to deconstruct. I also did not provide a strong functional definition of Lacan's concept of the Real, which limited my critique's ability to connect with the larger discourse. These critiques provided a valuable lesson in critical scholarship: there will always be a new perspective that needs to be developed, even with a topic as narrow as this. This instilled excitement in me as I completed this course, which has continued to accompany me during my Honor's thesis.