Meet Mackenzie: Secondary education, social studies

Well, my late father was a teacher who taught eighth grade for 26 years, and I had the opportunity back in 2017 to be able to help out in his class and I really enjoyed working with kids at that age, helping out and seeing how he did things. And to be able to translate that later into some of my internships, I'm continuing his legacy as a teacher.

My last internship was at Port Charlotte High School, and I helped assist in a social studies class where they had both 10th graders and 12th graders. I helped teach some of the lessons, grade papers and help get those skills up. So I can continue to be more competent within my final internship and a potential teaching career.

I think it fits my personality a little bit better. I love little kids, but out of the two of them, little kids are not necessarily my favorite to work with. I just don't have as much of a connection as I do with kids that are sixth grade up. And I feel like I can be more of myself with the older demographic of kids than I can with the younger children.

My show is Enter the Crypt with Delta of Venus (DJ name). And I came up with the program name because I've been collecting music for over 20 years and it's gotten to a point where my room and other places that I store music look like a musical crypt and it's all sorts of different genres. I've been a longtime record collector for 16 years and I really started when not a lot of females were collecting vinyl albums.

It's funny because I think back to when I went to the record stores with my dad and there would be a bunch of middle aged men and then there would be 12-year old me looking through boxes and buying the same stuff!

I bring in my own music from my own personal collection, and it can be anything from rock n' roll to music in foreign languages to goth rock to New Age and everything in between. Really, I wanted to create a show that was very different from what I heard on the radio growing up.

Yes. I honestly believe what I'm doing at WIDR will help me as a teacher. It has increased my confidence to contact people, be able to interact professionally with people and being able to collaborate and work together with people on different projects.

There was a $1 tape that I found in an estate sale for a band called, The Wild Woodies. They were a rockabilly band in Kalamazoo that was active from about early 1980s to 2012. So I digitized the tape, played it and one of the members ended up finding me. Then another member found me as well and they were really happy that I had digitized their music. The album was from 1988 and it wasn't available anywhere else except for cassette, but because of what I've did it's now available digitally.

I am very interested in the history of music. I'm also really interested in archiving different things and learning how to do that.

I also do archival work in the Arcadia neighborhood (Kalamazoo) and I'm helping archive architectural aspects of homes to see which ones are eligible for the Historical National Registry.

I actually got involved with them through Bronco Bash. They had a table there and I signed up. But you can also go on to their website and there's a section asking if you want to become a radio DJ or want to get involved in other aspects.

I would recommend Western to somebody who wants to become an educator just because there is a large community here and there's a lot of support in the secondary education program. Also Western is well known in the community and very well respected. We started out as a teachers college back in 1903, and that aspect is important to the mission today. There is also a really great student community. 

There is also a lot of things to do and support here, particularly for me as a disabled woman. I'm autistic and I didn't receive diagnosis until a little bit later on in life. I was about 20 years old when I received diagnosis, so it's fairly recent. It's a little bit harder for me to make friends or make those connections. But Western has enough opportunities that are out there that are becoming more visible for students to be able to interact and not feel isolated in their college experience. And let me tell you, that really makes a difference.