Discover Your Artistry
Creative Journey
My artistic journey began at a young age, where I discovered the power of creativity through theatre and performing. Today, I express my passion through Directing, Acting, and Music to bring imagination to life.
Cristin's Teaching Philosophy
When I retired from performing professionally and began teaching full-time, I discovered that my legacy wasn't found in my resume but in my students' academic, artistic, and personal growth. Their success, never measured by accolades or others' opinions, lies in their ability to know their worth and see the worth in all around them. Students flourish by being encouraged to understand their boundaries effectively and creating positive environments, fostering the same growth in their peers and colleagues. The key to this success is radical empathy for others, characters, and self-care, both on and off stage. This powerful approach has allowed hundreds of students to express their measured success and share those milestones with me daily.
Instilling the principles of radical empathy is not just a teaching method but a transformative power that can inspire and motivate. It's about understanding that an individual's merit lies in taking the time to know them, understand them, and feel their feelings. I engage with each student by co-regulating or mirroring the emotion they bring into the room. I get "down in the hole" with them versus speaking to them from above. This process of communication and connection creates a space for self-regulation to occur, and they begin to practice this with others. As individuals, they begin to make space, accept where people are, and reassure them that they are safe and supported. The need to compare and despair no longer holds, and the environment cultivates awareness for others and self. In acting, atmosphere work also enriches one's threshold so that emotions may be celebrated, felt, and utilized to understand others while maintaining the awareness or touchstone of one's Window of Tolerance. In academic classes, utilizing this practice of radical empathy aids in disseminating information to students, as it brings them to a focused state and thereby creates space in them to hear new information, take it in, and efficaciously use it in their writings and
craft.
As previously stated, students' success is no longer found in socially constructed measurements of success but rather in their ability to use self-regulation when faced with particularly activating circumstances. While allowing space to feel all the "feels," I aim to plant seeds of inclusion and well-being even as students face adversity in the world. Discourse becomes a developed tool for all instances because they know their self-worth, learn how to find balance, and effectively use their voice to share comments, ideas, concerns, and boundaries and move any work forward. During my tenure as an educator, not all of my students have entered the professional realm of theater. However, most of them have found their own measured success in creating theater companies, teaching, working in community theatre, and even blissfully navigating the world of Broadway and New York City. It's not enough to teach them the craft, the technique, and the methods without teaching them to discover the heart and empathy that gives life to all they do, no matter what they choose.
Learn More
Cristin currently works as a Visiting Instructor of Music Theatre
Colorado Mesa University