Melissa Wender is in her second year at West Nottingham Academy. She completed a B.A. in Theater at Connecticut College during which she studied theater at Oxford, The Moscow Art Theater, and the University of East Anglia. After studying at the Lee Strasberg Institute of Theater and Film, she completed an M.A.T. with a concentration in Secondary English from Loyola University of Maryland. She works with the basketball and drama programs. She believes that the core of the study of English is learning to communicate and interpret ideas. The work done in the English classroom has an impact throughout the lives of students in the present and the future. She enjoys teaching the foundational skills in Ninth grade and seeing how students develop as thinkers as upperclassmen.