Since the beginning of the semester, Bhumi Dalia has been a student teacher for our very own Kris Daughters and is preparing for next year as our eleventh and twelfth grade English teacher. She has been helping Daughters grade, create lesson plans, and has become a full-time teacher for the remaining six weeks of school.
“It has been a wonderful experience, Daughters is a great mentor teacher and I have learned a lot,” Dalia said. “She has been supportive in all of my creative exploration of teaching.”
In her time as a student teacher, Dalia has taught SAT Prep, Journalistic Writing, and AP Language students. As she heads into the next school year as an eleventh and twelfth-grade English teacher at Liberty, she hopes to keep some of the connections that she has already made in her time as a student teacher.
“I am super excited to be working with eleventh-grade and twelfth-grade students because I might actually have some of my AP Lang kids,” Dalia said.
Despite her current enthusiasm for her work, Dalia did not always want to be a teacher.
“This is a career change; I have worked within a corporate industry before,” Dalia said. “Dealing with adults is quite different from dealing with teenagers.”
Her AP Language Arts and AP Literature classes in high school inspired her to pursue rhetorical studies and literature in college.
“I am currently a Master’s candidate at Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington; it’s been a very exciting journey,” Dalia said. “It’s a shortened program. Where typically a master’s program is two to three years long, mine is eleven months so it’s been very intense.”
As her experience both at college and at Liberty has influenced her teaching methods she now has a better idea of who she is as a teacher. She won’t hesitate to alter the curriculum to make it more interesting for her students.
“I don’t see myself sticking to the book or the novel just on its own,” Dalia said. “I feel like students really need to get a holistic perspective on everything that they’re learning.”