Hi! I'm Sarah. Since 2013, when I was basically a child myself, I began child care and education at the Little Theater of Alexandria, first by helping my mother with her theater classes, most often Drama Tots, which I had taken when I was a tot. A few years later, I began to run my own 30 minute session after hers, "Musical Theater Tots," where I taught children age 3 - 6 songs and simple choreography to perform at the end of the session. This transformed into "Little Singers," in 2016, a free fall class before Christmas where I instructed middle schoolers in harmonious caroling, to be performed in the Alexandria Scottish Walk. After graduating high school, I came back every summer to run camps like Frozen song and theater, Barbie craft and play, and most fruitful, the Hogwarts camp, where me and three other teachers gave 30 elementary and middle school students an immersive experience, complete with daily classes and a mystery throughout, ending in a duel.
I also have babysat as well as au paired, and worked in the winter of 2020 at 826DC as an Educational Programs Intern, facilitating after school writing-related activities and readings for students age 9-15, including a sensory walk to Colombia Heights which culminated in a book, binded in-house.
Making structured play for kids throughout the years—letting a class's minds go free—has been the most fun in my life, and I couldn't think of a better job or something better I am capable of doing for the world. I love my educators, remember and appreciate every single one. I would be honored to be able to give a gift back to the next generation.
I attended Bennington College, which means that everything I want to encourage in children—to dance, write, collage, laugh, think—I want to structure my life around, I want to do professionally. I'm an artist who sees teaching and collaborating as intrinsic to the art process. At Bennington, a great deal of the experience was listening to others share their work, having to have an eye of critique as well as humanity. Teaching and educating is a resonant process, a mutual exchange, as well as a delicate relationship where in knowing young people, we have power we must hold responsibly.
