Rachael

= = Rachael Webster

Hi. I'm Rachael Webster. I am 34, married to a guy named Cameron, and mother to a five-year-old named Annabelle. I got my BA in Professional Writing from [|Carlow University] and this is my last semester in the MAT program before I begin student teaching. I'm planning on teaching Secondary English and I prefer grades 7-10, though I'll be happy to teach any of those grades.

I like knowing about weird things. I get super excited when I find out about weird things and I tend to perseverate on those things and tell everyone I know about them. I would say that this makes me an interesting person to invite to a dinner party, but it depends on what you think is appropriate dinner party conversation. If you want to talk about [|a woman with two uteri giving birth] or [|Mike the Headless Chicken], then we will get along swimmingly. I can also talk about normal things, but I get much more excited when I get to share weird things with you.

I also really like pop culture. When I was in high school, I had much better taste in music than I have now. I still like the things that I used to like, but my new likes tend to be things like Katy Perry and Ke$ha instead of what people who are really into music would call "good music." My high school self would probably be pretty embarrassed by my current self. I love watching TV and movies and I think it is pretty terrible that all of the new TV shows start at the beginning of the school year, when things get so busy. I realize that it works like this because people actually go out and do things during the summer and they watch TV when it's cold outside, but if we're honest, people still watch TV in the summer and there is a whole lot more time to do so in the summer.

Also, I love reading, which is probably easy to guess since I'm going to be an English teacher. My favorite genre is dystopian young adult literature. I can give you a huge list of awesome books to read beyond //The Hunger Games.// I'm pretty stoked for //The Hunger Games// movie to come out. Hopefully they will do a great job with it, though I'm trying not to get my hopes up. Someday, assuming that we will not be in our own dystopian future in which electives do not exist, I would love to teach an elective course on dystopian YA lit mixed with philosophy (that was my undergrad minor). I think it would be a great way to introduce kids to philosophy at a young age and inspire kids to be thoughtful and politically involved citizens.

One of the things I love about English is that it lets you talk about so many different topics. No offense to teachers of other subjects, but I feel like teaching English is like winning the lottery because you get to incorporate so many different things into it. You can talk about history, philosophy, science, and even math in such fun and inspired ways through writing and literature. It's limitless. Well, I mean limitless if you take away the limits of managed curriculum. Not to mention how much power you give a child when you give them the means to communicate effectively. I strongly believe that if you can read and write effectively, you have the power to do almost anything. If you can master the skills of communication, the world can be yours.

Well, I could go on and on about myself, but I think this is a sufficient start. Me, in a wikishell.

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So this podcast is super dorky, but it made me laugh a whole lot. I decided to do it because I had one day discussed with my friends how not only is "Two Princes" by the Spin Doctors a pretty terrible song to listen to, but it is a lyrical travesty. Here is my analysis of why.

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