Spotlight on… The College of Education

Caleb Roussel

English Education Major

Caleb Roussel’s childhood dreams involved being a forensic scientist with the hope of one day working in a lab. Writing, however, was always something that grabbedhisattention asearlyasgradeschool AFrankenmuth,Michigan, native and a graduate of Frankenmuth High School, Roussel speaks fondly of a fifthgrade research project on the legalization of marijuana. The affirmation he received from his teacher, Roussel says, was formative to his academic growth and his interest in writing in particular. In fact, writing became something he pursued outsidetheclassroom. Roussel recounts beingage ten andmeeting with afriend on Google Hangouts;there,theycreateda completelycollaborative storyinvolvingtwospies.Thesecoauthors only wrote when online together, telling the tale as a series of text messages.

That affirmation, sense of community, and creativity that Roussel associates with writing have been integral to his time at SVSU. For example, Roussel, who started in the Great Lakes Bay Early College in 2016 and who is on track to graduate in December 2022, cites projects completed in The Art of Teaching Writing (ENGL 380), as fitting this bill. The class, as taught by M. Pat Cavanagh, a professor of English, required him to combine research and creative writing. For Roussel, whose minor is in communication and theater for education, the project meant finding informationaboutthedramaticartsthathethenexaminedthroughavarietyofgenresfromspeeches to letters. Roussel additionally credits Deborah Smith, a professor of teacher education, for helping him understand the importance of reflection as a means to foster community and to better the writing he’ll be asking students to complete in the classroom someday.

Whether they were more traditional academic papers, term plans done in such formative classesasTeachingMethods: CurriculumandInstructioninMiddleandSecondarySchools(TEMS 380), or reflections on those lesson plans, Roussel’s assignments have taught him the importance of revision, something he plans on sharing with his future students. As he admits, he has been known to revise assignments after they have been turned in and after he has received instructor feedback evenwhensuchrevision and follow-up weren’t required Not onlydoeshe findrevising a pleasurable activity, but he also knows it helps him grow as a writer.

Roussel also appreciates the diversity that his English and English education classes have afforded him through others’ writings This, too, is something he hopes to share with his future students when he is teaching on the secondary level. One such text, he argues, that will enable him to do that is Cherie Dimaline’s 2017 The Marrow Thieves This dystopian novel, which Roussel describes asgroundbreaking, focuses on Indigenous peoples in Canadaandreferencestheatrocities that have been inflicted on this group; it also features gay characters and offers commentary on environmental issues Because he sees the novel as fitting into his goal of creating more inclusive classrooms, Roussel has already used the book in a teaching unit he created on Native American literature.

During his time at SVSU, Roussel has been a member of the Hip Hop team and an active member of the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity. Roussel’s extracurriculars can be seen as reminders of what writing can do be outlets for creativity, self-expression, metacognition, growth, and service. These characteristics are, likewise, reminders of Roussel’s future as a writer and teacher of writing In addition to teaching in the local schools when he graduates, Roussel hopes to pen a collection of poems, largely inspired by his own life, on the topic of acceptance. Writing, for Roussel, looks to be the gift that keeps on giving.