I understand the central concepts, inquiry tools, and structure of the study of English and Literature. This enables me to create learning experiences that make all aspects of the discipline meaningful as well as accessible for learners so that they are able to master the content.
I am highly qualified in terms of my education and experience.
I have a B.A. in English / Creative Writing from Hollins University. In 2014, I finished a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies / Concentration in Humanities and attained 44 hours in 500-level English classes. I am currently finishing my Master of Arts in Teaching / Secondary English (M.A.T.). My Master’s thesis is focused on Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences in the Secondary English classroom. More information regarding my qualifications, my post-secondary teaching experience, the specifics of the courses I have taken, can be perused in more detail on My Resume .
I received the ETS Recognition of Excellence on my Praxis II Content Area Exam: English Language, Literature, and Composition.
I received a passing score on the Virginia Communications and Literacy Assessment (VCLA).
However, there is more to having successful mastery of the area of Content Knowledge than merely knowing information.
One must ponder as one considers this standard: what are the central concepts, inquiry tools, and structures of my discipline?
In the context of my most recent experience with high school sophomores, to summarize what’s in the Virginia SOL’s, it is my role to be a guide in helping them learn to communicate skillfully in small groups; to examine, analyze, and produce media messages; to help them expand their vocabulary and apply to it knowledge of literary terms; to engage in literary analysis of various texts throughout history, particularly non-fiction; to engage in peer review and analysis; to continue building research skills in discipline-appropriate ways; and through this process, continue to cultivate grammatical correctness.
This is very important to know, yet…the answer to the following question is more important of all: how do I create learning experiences for my students that are going to be meaningful, relevant, and assure mastery of the content?
I have in prior sections explained how the StoryboardThat Oedipus project, the Twitter DM project translating a 2,000 year old text into modern day language, and exercises such as the Anticipatory Set and the Inspirational Posters all engaged students on levels which were accessible to them socially, emotionally, physically, culturally, and linguistically.
This resulted in an actual outcome that spoke volumes to me that what I managed to do to deliver this unit to these students actually worked:
The average grade going into this unit on the pretest was a 0. They had no experience with what I was about to teach. At the end, the average grade was a 91. I feel I successfully demonstrated not only my ability to know what I was teaching, but more importantly…how to bring it to my students in a way that was meaningful.
And in conclusion, I would like to share this feedback from my supervising teacher in which she stated:
“Elizabeth came to me with a deep knowledge of the basics of English, and of some specific works of literature. Even though she’d never read Antigone before, she knew how to read, research, and develop lessons and activities that worked very well with the student body and kept their interest. She worked very hard to ensure her lessons were obtainable and applicable to life, and I feel this is a piece of literature the students will recollect over the years due to the multiple ways of “digesting” it presented to them.”