Other important documents related to my major:

"Ugly"--I wrote this paper for DANCE 261 as a review of a modern dance piece I saw by ARENA Dances. The piece was a commentary on the negative physical standards of our society.

Education Template-- I wrote this as an overview of important educational standards to keep in mind for all students during ED 290.

"What is Natural"--This was a paper I wrote for a class while I was in Great Con; it compares the work of Caravaggio and Rembrandt, two of my favorite artists who painted during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

"El honor durante el siglo de oro"-- I wrote this paper as a response to an opera that I saw while in Spain; it discusses the rights of women during the time of Don Quijote.

"El arte de Goya"--This was an interesting paper that I wrote in Spain for ART 3102. It overviews the difficulties of the life of Goya, and how he portrayed and overcame them in his artwork.

"En busca de unidad y paz"-- I wrote this paper for my Sociology course, SOAN 3001, while I was in Spain; it discusses the importance of music in the lives of youth who are trying to preserve their culture.

"El hambre en Nada"--This paper discusses a book written by a women living under the regime of Franco; she defines in metaphors how the society was so suppressive that she felt she was constantly starving.

Lesson Plans One, Two and Three for ARTech--This I prepared for my teaching days with the high school students. The rest of the information about the project is on my senior project page.

Journals from Semester One and Semester Two--If you really want to know exactly what my brain was thinking the whole year, read these; I still find them entertaining.

Proposed Courses

Here is a list of all of the classes I took related to my major. Though the official list changed almost every semester, I am please with the final outcome, and I fel that each contributed greatly to the broad knowledge base I now have.

Fine Arts

ART: 124-Foundation Photography: With this full credit studio art class, I have been able to expand my knowledge of good photography, not only as an artistic medium, but also as an expressive tool in the media and the western society. My senior project consisted of some of my own artwork that I put up in a gallery space.

ART: 298-Art 1776-1880: This class gave me a good basic knowledge of the big name "isms" during this period in art history: neo-classicism, romanticism, and impressionism. The most effective part of the class for me was that we really focused on how and art and society went hand in hand as far as political, religious and popular standards are concerned.

ART: 3102-Masterpieces and Famous Spanish Painters: This was another interesting art course that I took while I was in Spain. We focused on the big name Spanish artisits: El Greco, Francisco de Goya, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. We learned a lot about how they influence art around the world, and also managed to define their own artistic stlyes separate from the popular mode at the time.

DANCE: 115-Movement for the performing artist: This dance course was very helpful for me as a tool for learning more about people’s interactions with the arts. Within the course, we studied the linguistic importance of performing on stage in theater, dance, opera, musical theater, and public speaking. This outlook helped me understand and recognize different learning abilities that each individual has, not only because of their personal background, but also because of culturally specific and linguistic differences.

DANCE: 111/211 Modern I and II: These two dance courses were very helpful to me in becoming more comfortable with my own body and my ability to express a feeling or emotion while I dance. I feel that I would be able to pass on this knowledge and feeling to students who show an interest in dance. It is important to feel comfortable with your self-image and your own ability to express emotions. Dance is an excellent way to promote self-awareness and well as recognize differences and similarities with others.

DANCE: 121- Ballet I: Taking ballet again was very helpful for me, because it took me back to the basics. I reveiwed a lot of helpful vocabulary, and was able to review a lot of what I had learned when I was younger. It helped me a lot in modern class as well, becuase we use much of the same technique for warm ups and preparation.

DANCE: 261-Choreography and Improvisation: This course is also helping me build self-confidence about movement, and allows me to explore new and fantastic ways to move and feel while I dance. Improvisation has many beneficial features for young children as well when it is used to explore new ways of moving. I feel that improvisation would be a wonderful tool for children to find a new expression by linking together movement with music, a word, or a feeling. There is a great satisfaction in knowing that any movement you make can be a form of expression for dance.

MUSIC: 269-Opera Workshop: This course was very beneficial for my artistic and creative side as well as my interest in teaching. My professor was very helpful during the Opera because he gave us very easy warm-up exercises with simple criteria that we could enhance and personalize to make them fun and effective at the same time. I feel like I learned a lot about teaching in the arts and how an instructor can give students guidelines and then let them explore their creativity to enhance everything they do.

Child Development

BIO: 123-Human Biology: I was happy I took this course, becuase it obviously provided me with much needed information on the human body, and development from conception to old age. I learned a lot about the brain, too, becuase our professor was a neuroscientist and loved talking about the develoment of his toddler and how it related to what we were learning about in class.

PSYCH: 125-Psychology (AP course): This was a good introduction course for me into the study of psychology. I learned a lot about the brain and how it functions, and also a lot about personality, human development and social patterns in humans. It will be good information for me to take into developmental psychology and educational psychology.

EDUC: 290-Educational Psychology: I have really enjoyed this class so far, not only because I am learning more about children from a teacher’s perspective but also because I am able to experience a little flavor of being a teacher myself during my bi-weekly field experiences. I find it very interesting to learn about different theories on child development in the classroom as well as in the community. I plan on writing my research paper on how the arts can be a motivational tool in the classroom for students.

EDUC: 376-The Exceptional Child: I chose to take this course because I have been particularly interested in art therapy, and in this class we learned about the development of children with special needs and the teaching methods for helping them learn and function well in the classroom. I learned a lot more about learning disorders, social and mental disorders and phsyical impairments in youth, and what it is we should be doing to teach them well. I helped out in the resource room at Sibley Elementary, and that was helpful for me to learn more about teaching strategies for children with disabilities.

IS: 298-Children, Imagery and Play: This was an independent study I took with Professor Rohn of the art/art history department, and we decided to study the effects of outdoor play on child development and learning. I read plenty of useful information on envrionmental education and the importance of play in learning, and I made an Art book demonstrating the effects of play and imagination in childhood. The course fit in really well with my senior project, and my major in general since it was an independent study and I could make more choices about what exactly I wanted to focus on.

Internship: Ordway Center for the Performing Arts: I had an amazing opportunity to participate as an intern on an evaluation team assesment of the education program at the Ordway during interim of my senior year. We conducted interviews with several classes that had recently visited the Ordway to see a production and consulted with the students about what the learned and enjoyed from their visit. We also spoke with the teachers of the classrooms to find out if they felt the program was useful and provided plenty of material and information to the teachers to help them prepare their students for the shows ahead of time, and de-brief with them afterwards. It was a great experience, and the results showed that many students felt very comfortable with the Ordway and really enjoyed the shows that they saw.

Society and Culture

ENVST: 137-Intro to Environmental Studies: This course, while not exactly dealing with children on a direct level, really opened my eyes to the necessity of envrionmental education, a topic that I continued to study during my independent study with professor Rohn during my final semester. I learned about many of the great envrionmental concerns we are facing right now, and I learned a lot about activism and taking a stand within your community.

PSCI: 117-Politics and Human Rights: During this course, we were asked to choose a human rights issue that was important to us and write a research paper on the situation and possible causes and consequences. I chose to write about the child soldiers in Sierra Leone. I learned a great deal about the culture in West Africa, and feel that the research I did emphasized my belief that children who are so strictly shaped by their society and class structure are very different psychologically than others in different cultures and sometimes similar situations.

SOAN: 3001-Islamic Culture and Art: This was another course I took in Spain, and it was a great way for me to learn about both the Spanish and Moorish cultures, and their influential art, architecture, music and dance. I learned a lot about the history of both cultures, and I was able to phsycially see and visit many places of popular and important art works around Sevilla, and southern Spain.

SPAN: 3002-20th Century Women Writers in Spain: This class gave me new insight into the culture of Spain. We primarily focused on the rights of women in Spain, the United States, and around the world. We read several famous Spanish works of literature written by women, and explain the social situation of wome during various periods of transitions during the twentieth century. It was very useful for me to learn how women used the art of literature to proclaim and denounce their status as women during the political dictatorship of Francisco Franco.