Posted by Alicia Camacho on 3/19/2024 11:00:00 AM
With the continuous support of the Echo Horizon community, educators are able to nurture their journey of lifelong learning and bring our students an innovative and engaging educational experience. We sat down with Franqui Messinger, our dedicated Kindergarten teacher, to delve into her recent Master's Degree and the impact it has brought to her classroom.
Please tell us about your Master’s program!
My masters program was through Middlebury College – the same college that Peggy attended for her masters degree! My specific program is called the Bread Loaf School of English. Funny enough, it’s named after the mountain range overlooking the campus that looks like a loaf of bread rising in the oven!
At my very first teaching job in Los Angeles, I saw a production of the “Taming of the Shrew,” put on by my students. I was absolutely inspired to continue with my study of Shakespeare and literature. I started researching graduate school programs focused in English. A parent in my class who was also my former middle school teacher, came to pick up his daughter after school one day and told me about his experience studying, reading, and writing in the mountains of Vermont. He introduced me to Bread Loaf, and I applied that night. I accepted my letter of admissions to start my masters journey for the summer of 2017.
In what ways did Echo Horizon support you in pursuing your higher ed degree?
I’ve always felt just just as passionate about being a lifelong learner and student as I have about being a teacher. Echo has supported my decision to continue my education, and it’s been so much fun and such a pleasure to share my Middlebury experience with my colleagues and my students. Knowing that I was attending the same graduate school as our principal made me feel closer to her. Sharing this experience with Peggy is something we bonded over when I was first hired! I knew that anyone who fell in love with my tiny, little school in Vermont was someone that I wanted to work for. Echo encouraged me to take the classes I was interested in and everyone in our administration team always had time to hear my stories and connections from my classes to our campus.
How have you brought your learning into the classroom?
One of my favorite aspects about my graduate program was that it offers so many different campuses around the world to attend. I studied at their campus in Vermont, Santa Fe, and England. In Santa Fe, I took a class taught by the head of the English department at Yale called American Modernism. For this class, we traveled all around New Mexico learning about different artists and art forms. I have been able to take so much of what I learned and apply it on a Kindergarten level to my class at Echo. Some of the artists that my kindergartners study throughout the course of the year are: Georgia O’Keeffe, Jeff Koons, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alma Thomas, Claude Monet, Andy Warhol, and Vincent van Gough!
How have Echo students been a part of your learning journey?
I have used my Echo students' help with my classes in graduate school multiple times, and I truly could not have graduated without them! One of my favorite final projects at Middlebury was my project for my class at Oxford University. The class was called Page to Stage, and we would read a play every week and then travel into London as a class and see a production of that play. Some of the plays we read and experienced were: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Raisin in the Sun,” “Guys and Dolls,” “Patriots,” “Beneatha's Place,” “Cabaret,” “As You Like It,” and “The Crucible.” I designed two different Kindergarten art pieces for each of the plays that we read over the course of the class. I was able to talk and discuss my ideas with some former students to help me create these art pieces! I also wrote a children’s story for my class on speculative fiction and Zoomed with a former Echo Horizon student who helped me design the characters for my book. I have loved using the imagination and creative minds of Echo students to help bring my own ideas and thoughts to life in my graduate school classes. I would not have been able to graduate without Echo’s support in so many ways, including the help of some very bright and passionate students! Thank you, Echo Horizon!
