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I am currently taking classes through American University’s online Master of Arts in Teaching program. I very much enjoy getting to gain a better understanding of the U.S. education system and learning about the different perspectives of my classmates.

I have since left my job in Middletown due to the school changing into a more STEM focused school and begin working as a substitute at Linden Street Elementary School in Plainville. I have worked there for three months now and I notice this school is much wider and there are more classrooms per grade. It’s not as diverse as Middletown but attention is given to different cultural backgrounds and students of various physical and learning abilities. It's been an adjustment getting used to the different policies as well as how the classrooms are run but I'm trying to implement what I'm learning in grad school and I hope the balance starts to get easier soon.

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June 2021: Summer at a Montessori School

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June 2021: Summer at a Montessori School

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With the school year over, I continue getting experience and work as a teaching assistant at a Montessori school in Windsor, Connecticut. I spend a lot of time working with students younger than elementary but it gives me experience working in early childhood care and dealing with a lot of kids at once with varying degrees of behavior without losing my cool.

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I decide to pursue my Masters of Arts in Teaching. I’ve always felt an attachment towards education and I feel there are many connections between education and the arts and I hope I continue to have more opportunities to combine the two in the future. I look at online programs due to finding ease with it the previous year and having the opportunity to be a student at a school outside of Connecticut. I’m instantly drawn to American due to its commitment to welcoming various backgrounds and working towards social change.

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My boyfriend and I move in together. We move into an apartment in Wallingford, Connecticut. This way we can still be near our families as we’re very close to them. We’re also very focused on our careers in Connecticut and are used to the state as we both grew up in Connecticut. After frequently visiting Connecticut throughout college and living in Wethersfield again during COVID, I find that I can still remain there for a long time despite trying to leave the state at the start of college.

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September 2020: Building Substitute Teacher at MacDonough Elementary School

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September 2020: Building Substitute Teacher at MacDonough Elementary School

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With my internship over and the theater world still heavily shut down, I decide to work as a Building Substitute Teacher at an elementary school in Middletown, CT since I enjoyed working with the kids over the summer and my mom who works at an elementary school recommended it. I’m nervous at first leading an academic classroom but almost immediately loved it. Nothing is ever the same each day and it’s fun seeing the kids learn and grow despite some days where classes were tougher than others. I’m welcomed into a positive and supportive community that truly cares for its students. I get involved in a peer mentoring program and an after school running club for fourth and fifth grade girls.

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June 2020: Grumbling Gryphons Traveling Children's Theater

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June 2020: Grumbling Gryphons Traveling Children's Theater

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I obtain an internship through the Connecticut Office of the Arts as an intern for a children’s theater company in West Cornwall, Connecticut. My boss and I don’t always see eye to eye and I soon find a career in arts administration too demanding. I do however enjoy working with the kids through two summer camp sessions that culminated in two different shows.

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My senior year of college shifts online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I complete my undergraduate career from home in Wethersfield. It’s a more comfier setting but it’s hard to dance the tango on Zoom and it’s insane to think that everything was shifted to computers so quickly. Nevertheless, I finish off my final semester with all As and eventually find creative projects and outlets through the internet.

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August 2016-May 2020*-Bard College (Online from March to May 2020 due to COVID)

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August 2016-May 2020*-Bard College (Online from March to May 2020 due to COVID)

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I attended undergrad at Bard College in Annandale on Hudson, New York. I chose this school because I wanted to spend more time outside of Connecticut at a school that was both artistically driven and academically challenging while still being open to students that didn’t have the best test scores. Although I thrived in my high school classes, I feel like I wasn’t adequately prepared for tests like the SAT. I couldn’t even take a test prep course because it conflicted with Spanish 3. Most students who were at Kinsella prior to ninth grade had already completed Spanish 3 the year prior since they took Spanish at Kinsella in middle school and were therefore able to take the test prep course.

My parents preferred that I go to a school with an actual campus rather than a school in the city. It turned out that Bard was surrounded by several small towns, possibly smaller than Wethersfield. I tried to keep myself busy though and it became easier once I had an off campus apartment and car starting my junior year and could travel around more.

However at Bard, I was now with students just as driven as I was, if not more. I tried to get involved in as many shows and arts clubs as I could but for some reason I sometimes felt like an outsider in a department that I’ve been passionate about all my life. Bard was diverse but it wasn’t like my high school. A lot of students were from New York City and Bard has a reputation for having many upper class students. Yet due to my drive, I took this time to explore different careers within the arts such as arts administration and art therapy. I loved acting but I also wanted to make a difference and change lives through the arts.

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September 2012-June 2016: RJ Kinsella Magnet School for the Performing Arts

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September 2012-June 2016: RJ Kinsella Magnet School for the Performing Arts

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Shortly after the pep rally, I found out that I was offered a spot at RJ Kinsella Magnet School for the Performing Arts. I attended the school for the rest of my high school career. Here, we had academic classes in the morning and performing arts classes in the afternoon. Classes were in smaller sizes and teachers gave us creative, out of the box projects to complete. I was soon at the top of the class and graduated as Valedictorian. Looking back though, I realize that with this school being in Hartford, an urban city, I became more exposed to diverse settings and backgrounds. I feel like I came in a little obnoxious but I understood things a lot more as time went on.

It also wasn’t an easy transition at first. My best friend Lauren was also offered a spot. On our first day, it was just too much for her and wanted to go back to Wethersfield High School. I however decided to stick it out as the new kid. This meant we weren’t going to be going to high school together but we would still see each other on weekends and vacations. Also, Kinsella was a new high school. I was part of the first graduating class and we were in the Pre-K to 8th grade building for ninth grade and then spent the next three years in a much smaller building. The school was very much still in development.

Nevertheless, I’m grateful for the artistic training I received. I was cast in plays with challenging subject matters that provided me an interest in social justice. I went to festivals and pre-college training programs. I even had an internship working as an assistant for children’s shows at the theater I grew up doing shows with. This was my first teaching experience.

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August-September 2012: Wethersfield High School

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August-September 2012: Wethersfield High School

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I went to Wethersfield High School for a few weeks. I started out promising in academics but then noticed that my grades were starting to slip. I broke my glasses one day and that was embarrassing. The large building made me feel uneasy and we had to take swimming as part of gym. I tried out for the fall play but the cast was made up mostly Juniors and Seniors. I did join the improv club though. My last memory at this school was going to a pep rally where my friend Paul was being obnoxious and I just didn’t really have a good time.

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I completed seventh and eighth grade at Silas Deane Middle School. Almost every middle schooler in town went here. I struggled with academics a lot in seventh grade and even got a D+ in math. I wanted to join the drama club but it was hard to find my place there. I didn’t like the audition process and felt like they valued singing skills above all else. I tried to join other clubs ranging from filmmaking to robotics just to try to fit in and mostly did theater outside of school.

8th grade was much better. I started to get used to the classes a lot more and even made the High Honor Roll. I also got to host the school talent show and was named the friendliest girl in the yearbook. That didn’t stop some teasing though and it really affected me and my friends who were also getting teased. On the last day of eighth grade, Lauren almost got into a fight with a bully. During eighth grade, I learned about the application process for high schools in Hartford that focused on particular subjects. I applied to the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts via a lottery (not an audition) but was waitlisted. I applied to another performing arts school but was also waitlisted. Although my chances of getting off the waitlist were greater at this second school, I still had to enroll in Wethersfield High School.

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My brother Thomas is born. At the age of 2 and ½, he is diagnosed with autism. It ends up being a bit severe as he can’t really talk in full sentences and always needs supervision so that he doesn’t get in trouble although he can perform a significant amount of actions pretty independently. He starts out in the Wethersfield public school system but then switches over to a school in West Hartford for children with special needs starting in first grade.

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September 2004-June 2010: Elementary School

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September 2004-June 2010: Elementary School

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Because the Webb School was only for pre-school and kindergarten at the time, I went to elementary school at Hanmer School. That was the public elementary school closest to where I lived in Wethersfield. After kindergarten, teachers didn’t think I needed extra help with my motor skills anymore. This was in part due to budget cuts and having to choose students who needed even more help but my parents agreed with them and didn’t fight with them about it.

My favorite teacher at Hanmer was my first grade teacher Mrs. Solnik. She helped me discover my love for reading and told me to send all of my worries to the moon. However, throughout the rest of elementary school I found that while I was very well behaved, I struggled academically. Especially with math. I eventually received extra help in math and got an award for my improvements at my elementary school graduation but I still felt like I didn’t fully understand it. It was in fifth grade when my sight became weaker and had to start wearing glasses. My fifth grade teacher (who wore glasses herself) said “Ouch!” when we were given a sight test in class and were told that we may need glasses if we had a hard time with it. That didn’t make feel good about having to wear glasses at first.

I once again got along with a lot of kids but later mostly spent time with a small group of friends. I realized as I got older that I was shy and it was therefore difficult for me to make close friends. However, I met my best friend Lauren in first grade on the bus and we’re still friends to this day. Unfortunately, I also had to deal with teasing from a couple of boys and bullying from a lot of girls. I feel like I didn’t fit in with their athletic girl vibe. I was more artistic and began taking acting seriously in fifth grade. I remember having a collection in my backpack of things I got from school but then some kid told another student about it on the bus and they thought it was weird.

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I attended the Webb School for kindergarten. Pretty much every 5 year old in Wethersfield who lived within a reasonable distance from the school went there. I was an all-day student because the school began to offer that as an option.

I remember getting along with several of my classmates but my two closest friends were Timothy and Sierra. However, I also remember at least one boy picking on me on the bus. There were also a couple of times where I remember a couple of kids not wanting to be friends/close friends with me anymore but I don’t remember why.

I still needed a bit of help with my motor skills. In general, I was a very creative and imaginative student. Part of me can’t believe some of the things I did and said (like saying to my teacher it was Harry Potter’s birthday as if he was my imaginary friend) Yet at the same time, it makes sense for where I am now.

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I started going to Wethersfield Pre-School. My first year of pre-school was actually in a different pre-school building (Soundbridge which is also in Wethersfield) but it was still under Wethersfield Pre-School.

Although my mom says I was well behaved and enjoyed going there, I don’t necessarily recall it being like that for some reason aside from some times I remember playing with a McDonald’s toy kitchen, doing art activities and making food like apple pie with the class. Instead, I vividly remember crying at a party and my mom had to take me home early. I was also put in timeout once and tried to escape multiple times. This may have just been during the year in the other building though.

I also needed a lot of work on my motor skills and had to work separately with different teachers sometimes. This is why I went to Wethersfield Pre-School in the first place. Because private pre-schools couldn’t offer me such a service.

Additionally, I used to bring an Elmo doll with me to school. My mom said I cried a lot on the first day so the teacher suggested my parents get me an Elmo doll since he was my favorite at the time. I believe this must be why I started focusing more on the negative of pre-school.

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I went to daycare for two weeks but my parents weren’t happy with it. They felt there wasn’t enough staff members and they kept giving me long naps because I didn’t sleep a lot at night. Instead, my mom worked in the evenings and then my dad would watch me when he came home from work.

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I was born at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut but was raised in the nearby suburban town of Wethersfield. I have lived in Connecticut for most of my life and grew up middle class.

Although my parents are originally from Long Island, my Dad got a job offer in Wethersfield and my parents realized that the cost of living there was better and it was less crowded. My mom also points out that they thought Wethersfield was a nice town with good schools.

My Dad is a cook who was a manager at the Hometown Buffet for most of my youth but then quit when I was in high school to open his own restaurant. He has since moved on to being a cook at a restaurant in Newington, Connecticut as running his own place became too much for him. My mom has frequently worked in childcare jobs and is currently a paraprofessional at a public elementary school in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Neither of my parents graduated from college.