I received my Pennsylvania teaching certification for grades seventh through twelfth in 2022 after completing my student teaching. I student taught at a rural school district in central Pennsylvania, While there I taught 10th grade English for the spring semester. I had four classes that ranged between seventeen and twenty-two students per class which contained students from varied backgrounds and needs; within these classes, I had students with IEPs, GIEPs, and emotional support needs. Student teaching allowed me to connect theoretical teaching practices to real-world experience, ensuring I am able to work with students regardless of their needs and still provide quality instruction. Through this experience, I gained a stronger understanding of public education and forged strong professional connections with students, in addition to acquiring more refined teaching practices. Working in the classroom at the high school level was a wonderful experience I would not trade for the world. 

During my student teaching experience, I showcased my knowledge of content and distinguish myself as a strong educator to both school administrators and my direct supervisors. I designed my own unit for the duration of my time student teaching where I sought to create a safe and welcoming environment for all students while providing supportive learning. I placed a special emphasis on the application of Danielleson's framework both in my classroom and my materials in addition to initiating activities through Bloom's taxonomy. My unit was focused on breaking down William Golding's Lord of the Flies, a novel that has become cultural collateral, in addition to preparing students for the Keystone exams at the end of the year. Golding's novel focuses on the use of allegory and symbolism to scaffold the text's meaning within the narrative and his characters. My unit combined traditional classroom instruction with a breakdown of each chapter supported by connecting activities and articles. Students gained an in-depth understanding of the novel while still being able to connect its contents to their own lives despite their drastic differences.

Lord of the Flies is a classic text which can still offer many insights even in today's modern world. In order to further the impact of this book on my students, I taught the book with an emphasis on historical context and psychology, while implementing gamification into the unit. These subjects were instrumental in facilitating students' understanding and allowing them to grasp the challenging concepts of the novel. Students got to research and familiarize themselves with psychological effects like masks through articles like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the effects of roles within society. The psychological studies were complimented by the historical context of the book's origin and how they can see similar effects during the mid 20th century surrounding the various literary movements of the time. Lastly, both of these additional areas of context would have been less effective without the implementation of gamification. The implementation of gamification focused on furthering students' understanding of text-dependent analysis in addition to creating self-motivated students through educational games and game-like rewards. Gamification allowed the student to respectfully and calmly compete against each other in smaller activities to influence their continued independent learning.

During my time as an undergraduate, I was fortunate to work on a team of interns who composed and organized Susquehanna Universities Common Reading Anthology. The anthology is a yearly publication distributed to incoming students as a way to foster early collegiate skills while giving students from various and diverse backgrounds a common experience to start their time at college. This anthology is the backbone of the Perspectives-100 course which is a requirement for all first-year students. Being on this team of interns was a wonderful team-building and professional experience where I gained work experience in compiling, editing, and publishing an anthology. Between seven undergraduates we handled everything from the selection, funding, and creation of the anthology.  The interns and our faculty advisor chose texts which related to our University theme of the year and then pitched our selections to a board of faculty members who criticized the selected texts to ensure that every major on campus would be represented. 

My specific job as the Junior Reading and Teaching Guide Editor was to create discussions and activities in addition to providing connecting and supplementary information for professors of the Perspectives course. I researched and organized information about the author, subject, and background of the texts to provide professors with content for the course. Additionally, I also searched for complementary or related content to support the texts within the anthology. Along with the Senior Reading and Teaching Guide Editor, we designed and formatted all of the pertinent and supplemental information into an accessible platform via a hand-designed website that is open to the entire university.  I was able to apply my background both in English and education to orchestrate my own work but with such a large task, but teamwork was the most important aspect.  

After my time as an intern, I was brought back as one of the advisory board members, as a student representative, where I helped to discuss and validate texts for the anthology. Being able to experience both sides of the process allowed me to gain a unique insight into the publishing world as well as higher education. Being able to be a part of such a unique and treasured tradition on campus was a wonderful experience, but the practical experience and exposure to real-world work within the field of English was far more impactful on my future and how I want to pursue my career. 

During my time at Susquehanna University, I also volunteered to be a writing tutor for the Summer Kids College where I helped facilitate a supportive and welcoming classroom for students who are passionate about creative writing. The students ranged from 6th to 8th grade and they were all young writers who were actively searching to improve their skills as authors. . Being able to work with these students was an incredible experience because of their high degree of motivation surrounding writing and creativity. 

As a volunteer for this summer program, I was expected to support the students in their creative exploration across their different focuses. This meant many things from editing students' writing to providing feedback, and even introducing them to new writing forms. I helped instruct different types of writing which were paired with workshops to allow students to try each literary form before moving on. After the instructions and practice, I helped facilitate a large critique where students shared their work and received constructive criticism from their peers. During this time I was expected to manage discussion and also provide my own response to students' work. This was one of my first times working directly with students in their own creative endeavors; it showed me just how special teaching is outside of schools and just how diverse of a field it is. Being able to work with students in such a way solidified my pursuit of education and teaching students.