As a senior in high school looking for a strong interdisciplinary background in the liberal arts and sciences with a focus on English literature, taught by incredibly diverse faculty, I found Â鶹´«Ã½ÍŶÓ's English department a natural fit. Over the course of my time as an English major, I pursued not only English literature with an American Studies minor, but also a New York State certification to teach middle school and high school students. As I read, debated, and discussed writers from across the canon, I worked alongside fellow English majors who would ask that frustrating but enlightening question: Why? This attention to detail and open-mindedness from fellow students served me well when faced with real-life students as I began my student teaching senior year. I worked in an inner-city school in Rochester, and then in Ghana as part of Â鶹´«Ã½ÍŶÓ's student teaching program. The opportunity to live and work with Ghanaian students who were learning to speak English as a second language sparked my curiosity in how one learns to read; that old question — Why? — came up again. My Â鶹´«Ã½ÍÅ¶Ó background instilled that question in me permanently.
After graduation, I began a master's in Curriculum and Teaching at Columbia University with a focus on becoming a Literacy Specialist. Over that year, I studied the foundational skills and building blocks of reading, and how to recognize and work with students with reading disabilities. I conducted research under the guidance of the staff developers at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, and worked in New York City public schools. Whenever I would think about why I was working to reach struggling students, I would remember how happy I was reading and writing about great works of art at Â鶹´«Ã½ÍŶÓ, and how much literature can teach us about ourselves and life itself. I had always loved reading from the start, and Â鶹´«Ã½ÍÅ¶Ó had fostered that to the fullest extent. It was now my time to help students uncover that same love of literature.
I have just finished my first year teaching in my own classroom, at a public school on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. I think that my degree in English is the most important part of my teaching background because instead of getting bogged down in state test scores and measurable data, I know that in my heart, I believe teaching someone to read is the most powerful gift you can give them, and when they learn to love it, I can help them discover writers who speak to their soul. That was the gift that Â鶹´«Ã½ÍÅ¶Ó gave me.