My Autobiography
I grew up in the small town of Newbern, Tennessee, the town where most of my family had lived for years. I graduated from Dyer County High School in 2001, and my junior year at Dyer County is where I learned that I wanted to be a teacher. I loved acting at Dyer County, but it wasn’t until Dyersburg State that I really developed my love for theatre. It was then that I knew I wanted to be a drama teacher. The art program at Dyer County High School was very limited. It’s my belief that drama can be used to prepare students for after school, and help them feel comfortable with themselves.
Theatre has always been an important part of my life. I was never highly interested in theatre until I started Dyersburg State Community College and worked with their department both on stage and off stage. It was there that I learned about what went on backstage during shows and learned the controls for both lights and sound. I’ve been in numerous plays including Roomies, The Boys Next Door, and Harvey. Most recently, I’ve acted in The Tempest, Arsenic and Old Lace, and a children’s play, The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf, at Union University.
I’ve worked with different schools and have enjoyed the work that I’ve done with those schools. I started working with the Extended School Program for Bradley Academy in December of 2004. During my first six months working there I won “Staff Person of the Year,” which I am very proud to have won. At Bradley, I taught an after school drama theatre course for students in K-6th grades. During those classes, we learned about the stage, acting theories (such as character development), and also learned a variety of other subjects through the use of dramatics. The students already had an active knowledge of drama because Bradley Academy has a drama program already in place, which makes teaching it so much fun. Most recently, I worked at Covenant Overcomers Summer Program as their theatre teacher. There, I taught an eight-week theatre program that incorporated different parts of drama, including improvisation, music, dance, voice, and relaxation. At the end of those eight weeks, I wrote and directed two skits that the children performed in front of their parents at the end of the summer program.
I believe that I have been very successful in my education. I’ve been nominated for “Who’s Who among American High School Students.” I’ve had great success in school by being on the dean’s list five out of the seven semesters at Dyersburg State Community College and Middle Tennessee State University. I’ve also been on the honor roll twice. I’ve also had great success in theatre by being in many different plays (as stated above) as well as being selected in the top 10 during a Tennessee wide acting competition.
In conclusion, I believe that theatre is a vital part of the education system because it puts a focus on the student and allows them to be expressive, while learning about literature, drama, and reading strategies. Most importantly, theatre can be fun for a student. Both in college and in the workplace, students will need to feel comfortable with themselves in order to speak in public, and theatre is a great starting ground to do that because actors are working off others and working with others producing a piece of literature on stage.