Rebecca Kojetin - Profile

My name is Beka Kojetin. I have two teenage boys from my first marriage, and am married for a second time to a wonderfully supportive man who moved to Illinois from Minnesota just for me.

I have been teaching in the English department of a northern Illinois high school for 18 of my 21 years. During these years I have taught students with a wide variety of abilities in the different courses offered.

For graduation, the school requires students to complete 3 years of English in order to graduate: English 9 which focuses on literature, composition and grammar; English 10 which focuses on literature and composition; Oral Communications which focuses on research skills and public speaking skills; and English 11 which focuses on American literature, grammar review, composition, and research skills. In addition to this, students may opt to take an additional year of English which focuses on British literature or they may elect to take one or two of the handful of English electives: Advanced Oral Communications, Contemporary Literature, Newspaper Production, or Yearbook. For 16 years, I also taught the two theater courses offered and directed the yearly productions.

As a veteran in the English department, I assist in writing the course and department goals, objectives, and outcomes for the various English courses. In addition to this, I also help develop course outlines and department finals for various courses.

Prior to my experience at the high school level, I taught junior high school language arts at a Catholic Parochial school, and one year of fifth and sixth grade general studies at a creative and performing arts program.

A few years ago I completed a field-based master's program through St. Xavier's University (Chicago), with the degree focusing on teaching and leadership. Most of the assignments for the various courses in the program allowed each individual student to develop projects for his/her own classroom or to use that classroom for research and analysis. For my Action Research Project, I was able to evaluate my accelerated students in the English 11 course as to their ability to creatively synthesize and critically analyze and evaluate literature.

I currently write adolescent book reviews for secondaryenglish.com; I maintain a site for craft-minded individuals entitled creativecraftingstudio.com; and I write for a topic entitled Teaching in the English Department on Suite101.com.

In my spare time (right, like I have spare time), I work at the local Sears, review adolescent literature for a website, and am working to develop my own typing, editing, and researching service.

In my personal life, I have a wide variety of interests that include reading, writing (fiction and non-fiction), and researching, but also includes sewing, painting plaster figures, gardening, cooking, garage-saling, playing piano and violin, theatre, long walks in nature, and swimming.

I became interested in the internet when my school went on-line and I took a seminar that the school offered. I was hooked. I use the internet for teaching as well as personal enjoyment.