For the new theater department student teacher, Elise Deardorff, coming to SHS wasn’t planned for. When getting ready to student teach, she wasn’t exactly sent off to a school, but rather paired with a teacher, Kimberly Roberts.

As a senior at Ball State, Deardorff spends her last semester educating herself in action in the classroom before she plans to spend her career somewhere around Muncie. Having been in two productions with the Muncie Civic Theatre, Deardorff thinks that she might want to get involved as the educational director or the assistant to that position.

“(Muncie Civic) has a really awesome youth program,” Deardorff said. “So I’ve thought about trying to get myself in there…I care about those kids a lot.”

According to Deardorff, she considers herself to be a family person and ultimately wants to be a stay at home mom after carrying on teaching for a while.

So far, Deardorff has gotten off to a seemingly good start.

“I love (SHS), the kids are really nice,” Deardorff said. “You guys have a really great theater program.”

According to Deardorff’s past experiences, usually half the battle is trying to get kids to care about the program and it seems like that isn’t a problem at SHS. Just witnessing the most recent spring play auditions, Deardorff was surprised at the turnout with almost 40 students to audition.

Senior Kristina Green has spent a little time with Deardorff in the third period tech theater class. According to Green, Deardorff has been a lovely person and has been nothing but kind and helpful to the students.

“I think she’s doing a great job,” Green said. “She’s never afraid to ask Mrs. Roberts a question to help improve her own skills and she makes an effort to connect to her students.”

Green thinks these things make all the difference to the students who take her classes.

Theater is something that Deardorff considers to create a really great opportunity for students to figure out who they are and express themselves in appropriate, effective ways. She also believes that the environment theater creates allows students to get to know others when normally they wouldn’t have socialized.

“I feel like it grows people,” Deardorff said. “And it helps people become more conformed and sensitive and better people.”