Sally Leahy teaches language arts and humanities at Glendale High School in Glendale. Early in her life she realized that her love for books was matched by her love for the discussions that followed from her reading. The pleasure she found in expressing her own ideas and in responding to those of others made a career in teaching language arts a "natural choice." Ms. Leahy believes that educators today must stress self-directed discovery in their teaching; it is important, she thinks, to explore how one knows rather than what one knows. She would very much like to pursue teaching methods that develop experiential learning, in which students "attempt to create something" resembling the model before them. Beyond helping students understand first hand the aesthetic shape of a given work, this process would immerse them in the personal and historical conditions under which the work came to be. Ms. Leahy has seen the success of this method in her humanities classes, and she would like to see it implemented and evaluated throughout the curriculum.
1957 Northern Illinois University, B.A.
