Teacher Spotlight: Ms. Amanda Gibson

Ms. Amanda Gibson is a great teacher here at WGHS with teaching performing arts/drama. Here's a little about how her career started and how she got here. 
by Tristan Banks and Addison Butler

Ms. Gibson is a teacher here at Walnut Grove high school who loves her job. She has been teaching drama for a while now. She talks about her background, “I actually grew up in this area and was a student here at Walnut Grove. I was one of the first students to come in when the school was brand new, and they just cut the ribbon on it.  I was in the theater department and also did volleyball and cheer and a couple of other things around here.  So I've been here a while. My family has been all over, but we are from here.”

Ms. Gibson loves all the staff and students here at Walnut Grove. She mentioned, “I wouldn't want to be a teacher anywhere else. The staff is amazing and the students are fantastic. I've worked at other schools and there's nothing quite like walnut grove.” She also mentions, “The biggest challenge especially when it comes to performing arts is making sure everybody is invested.  We have a lot of kids who are not sure where they fit in, so our biggest goal is to make sure everyone has a place here, but that comes with commitment.”

Ms. Gibson really likes to help her students be confident in themselves and give them quotes in everything they do. Especially for her students in drama because they do a lot of performing, and it can be nerve racking for some people.

Some advice she mentioned for anyone who wants to become a drama teacher is “Just to go for it.  You have to have a lot of passion for it because, especially nowadays, performing arts is so important.  They give people a way to express themselves and show others how they feel and that can be scary.  What I recommend for anyone trying to become a drama teacher is to fully commit and be sure that you love it because there are disappointments but also amazing opportunities.”

Ms. Gibson wants all her students to be successful in whatever they pursue so she states,  “I hope they take a new found sense of confidence; even if we are teaching people on stage or back stage, we are teaching them things they wouldn’t learn elsewhere.” When she was younger she wasn't expecting to become a drama teacher, so that was a big change of hers, “No, I was fully on the train to go into rehab sciences. I was a speech therapy major, so I learned a lot about the human voice and how we communicate with each other, which I think really helped this. My first passion was always theater, but I didn't expect to be back here. I always expected to go to the more medical side of things.” She also mentions, “I had no idea I even wanted to be a teacher. I always joked that when I graduated, I told my old drama teacher the only way I would ever come back to Walnut Grove and teach was if I came back and took the drama teacher position.”

As a result we want to thank Ms. Gibson for being an amazing drama/theatre teacher here at WGHS and always having an impact for her drama students as well as the staff here at Walnut Grove High school.  

---