About Me — Dawn Bevier

A tale of a teacher, learner, and wild child

I was voted “Most Likely to Be Famous” in my senior year of high school. Perhaps it was my penchant for the theater. Maybe it was the kohl eyeliner that rimmed my eyes and the scarlet lipstick that adorned my adolescent lips. Maybe it was just that, even then, teens realized most stars are crazy and eccentric. And I was a mixture of both.

And speaking of mixtures, you won’t find a stranger human cocktail than me. I’ve always loved opposites. I was the poet that wore fishnets and ripped jeans. The wild child who smoked cigarettes in the bathroom but was asked to teach Shakespeare to the class when the teacher was absent. My dream was to be the Honors student who walked onto the stage with her guitar slung over her back.

I wanted to experience the world in every way. Go to crazy concerts and dress as no teenager should. Sit by a roaring fire in silence and read the classics. Date the jock and the rebel and the intellectual to see what each had to offer.

Twenty years later, not much has changed. I’m not famous, well unless you count the adolescents to whom I have taught literature for two decades. I went into education because I want students to see that the “old books”
they would never normally open, those by Emerson, Thoreau, and other great writers, can…