About Me

My name is Stephanie DiVito, and I am an English Major at Rutgers University Camden. I am an aspiring teacher and later guidance counselor. I chose to major in English because ever since my senior year of high school, I have always been interested in literature because I believe every piece of literature we encounter teaches us a lesson about the world. At first, I wanted to become a high school English teacher to teach high school seniors those lessons. However, I changed my certification to elementary education because I want to teach fifth graders those lessons in the world. I find that I relate better to fifth graders than high school students because I know I am a child at heart myself. Furthermore, I know that I can teach fifth graders lessons, such as the ones I discuss, to use through the rest of their lives at a young age. I know these lessons will be especially important as a guidance counselor because these are the messages I will be discussing with students to help them overcome obstacles.

Why this Project?

I started SND56Degreestory to show how my choice to major in and teach English impacted me, and how it should impact students as well. I discuss different pieces of literature as they pertain to seven themes I mention in my Contributions from Literature section: Mental Illness, Identity and Coming of Age, Self-Reinvention, Self-Acceptance, Distance, Friendship, and Vanity. I connect all of these ideas back to my Literature Philosophy, or my idea of what literature should do to others as it has done to me. Not all the literature I talk about is fifth grade literature, but they still have a significant lesson in which I think they should learn. Another idea I incorporate in SND56Degreestory is my own experience. In other words, I use literature to tell my own story just through my degree but outside of it as well. Literature has not only taught me lessons about the experiences of others, but my own as well. Because of my English degree, I have been able to look at my own experiences through the perspective of literature and learn why certain experiences in my life happened, and what they say about how I have grown as a person.

Why English?

What is so beautiful about having an English major is that the learning about the world happens inside and outside of the classroom. English majors, such as myself, have an interest in reading that goes inside and outside of the classroom. The various pieces of literature I talk about are those I have experienced both inside and outside the classroom. Do I get any less value from reading literature inside the classroom than outside the classroom? Of course not. It is just as natural to find meaning in literature reading, viewing, or listening to it on ones own time than it is for class. I feel like I chose an English degree for this reason, the process of finding meaning in themes of pieces of literature is so natural that I should get a degree and make a career out of it. Furthermore, it is a practice I should share and instill into my fifth grade students to show them how natural finding meaning in pieces of literature which we read, watch, and hear. There is always meaning to find in these work, and it is up to them to interpret.