Students walking into the slightly dim, wide open auditorium for their drama class, the stage covered in the projects from the after school theater guild. Echoes all around as the students talk to each other grabbing their script, all getting ready to do voice warm ups,and the teacher radiating with excitement leading the warm ups to start the day’s class, happy to help the students discover themselves. Mrs.Sadowski, a teacher and a member of the Theatre Guild here at Leyden, has been committed to the lights and the stage since a little kid.
Growing up, she always had a dream to become a famous actor and stay with the stage, but has changed her mind with more experience she had in theater. Mrs.Sadowski goes and states,”when I was really little, before high school, I told my mom I was going to leave and go move and be with my aunt and be a famous actor. Now I have a different perspective from then.”
Mrs.Sadowski explained about her experience in theater and how much she enjoyed her time there. She states with a spark of energy , “I first started doing theater when I was in Intermediate school. My school didn’t have theater until high school, so I just did some acting stuff outside. In high school, I had a whole bunch of different teachers. I was very lucky that I had a director that was pretty consistent, then there were a couple different technical directors and designers that I got to work with. It was a very awesome experience.”
Not everything is easy transitioning from highschool to University,she talks about her intense experience and how in the end found it all helpful. She says, “I graduated from the theater School at DePaul University with a BFA in theater technology, and I went to NYU for my master’s in education. I feel like the theater school was very intense, we’d be ending our day at 10pm which is what my schedule is like now. so it prepared me. I’m very thankful for that experience,I feel like I learned a lot at the time. I didn’t like it, but looking back on it, there were a lot of things that I really appreciated from that.
She adds on and says,“So I went into theater school thinking I wanted to do all the backstage, like stage management and all this other stuff. But then when I got to college and realized, kind of all the logistics scared me. since I had been inspired by my educators, when I was done with college I was like, “I’m going to go be a theater educator”.”
“ When starting to be an educator, I was more working with the adults and then only teaching the one course about theater tech. Which I still love to teach too, because it’s a whole other way of exploring your imagination and being creative. But I think I like being in the classroom more because I get to work with students and get to kind of like, see things in a different light.”
Sadowksi enjoys teaching and opening the minds of her students as well as letting them find thereself through her class; “I really enjoy my job because I feel like I get to feed off of your guys’ energy and that’s what I love about theater, is that you get to explore, you get to play, you get to try to, like, be somebody else, but like, you also contribute your own experience into things. I’m hoping that, there’s a little bit of self discovery, and then a little bit hoping that students kind of develop a little bit of empathy by looking at different characters and looking at different stories, and like taking also their own experiences and exploring them, Because I feel like as an actor, you grow as a person by the things that you get to experience and put together.”
Savannah Wieman, A student of Mrs. Sadowski talks about how her teaching made her enjoy going to school, she states “She’s a really good teacher. her class was one of the reasons why I actually wanted to come to school last year, she makes the day really, really fun for the 45 minutes that I’m with her the class, just like it brings kids together, and it makes friendships with kids who otherwise wouldn’t be friends with each other, if it wasn’t for that class. it’s a really good class, and she’s an amazing teacher, it makes my day go by very nicely.”
Sadowski will continue to show the love she has for theater and her career as well as inspire her students to really think about their Future, don’t fully commit to one thing, always find other stuff you enjoy . be open to any learning opportunities as you can do a lot of hard things but appreciate it in the end just like how she did with her own learning experience.
