Dean's Scholarship Recipient: Sonya Egan

Master of Arts in Teaching Single Subject Candidate Sonya Egan was presented with the 2017-2018 Dean's Scholarship by Dean Richard Arum.

About Sonya Egan

I have always loved school--so much so that I wanted to be a student forever. After starting a PhD program in Comparative Literature & Spanish, however, I realized that I was far more dedicated to learning from teaching than from research. My past teaching experiences--which include working at the Undergraduate Writing Center at UCLA, TA’ing ESL classes, teaching English abroad in Madrid, Spain, and serving as an AVID tutor--have all inspired me to return to the classroom as a teacher. Two years after leaving my PhD program, the MAT program has been the perfect place to combine my passion for inquiry and scholarship with hands-on, practical experience for becoming the best teacher I can be and, of course, remaining a lifelong learner.

I want to help my future students discover their voices and share their stories—and teach them to learn from the stories of others. In an English classroom, this looks like creating a classroom culture of respectful listeners and critical, compassionate communicators. It looks like teaching texts that express different worldviews, told from a variety of different voices. When students can connect with a text on a personal and cultural level, they will feel affirmed that their stories, too, are important. Similarly, I want to be able to use my fluency in Spanish to support Spanish-speakers and am also working towards a second single-subject credential in Spanish. Through the process of learning language and culture (whether in English or in Spanish), I want my students to develop greater personal and cultural awareness.