Teaches: High School English Seminars
Miss Odom was born and raised in Manning, South Carolina. She joined Ben Lippen in 2015. She has awesome parents and a younger brother. She also has two dogs: Luke and Emmett. In her free time, she spends time at her church, eating, drinking coffee, or hanging out with her friends. She can usually be found at Drip on Main, the Nickelodeon Theatre, or First Baptist Columbia. She also loves reading books and writing when she can find the time.
What is something most people don’t know about you? Something most people don’t know about me (outside of my circle of friends) is that I’m (unironically) a huge Nicolas Cage fan.
What are you passionate about? I’m passionate about students and investing in their lives. I love seeing them understand who they are in Christ because that reveals so so much about every other aspect of their lives. I’m so passionate about discipleship and showing students what it means to be loved well in a Christ-centered community. I believe that loving students well in church community prepares them to be leaders in churches and ultimately takes the gospel further. Watching students fill up on the truth of Jesus so that they can pour it out into others is my greatest passion.
Why do you choose to teach at Ben Lippen? What I love most about BL is that it feels like home. I grew up in SCISA; I went to Laurence Manning my whole life and taught there for 3 years after college. Ben Lippen just feels familiar and wonderful. I also love that the presence of the Holy Spirit is evident in these halls.
What do you love most about teaching English? Oh, wow, what don’t I love most about the subject I teach? I just adore stories. The coolest thing for me to see when I read books that are written by those who don’t know Jesus is the longing that they have (or had) for something more. Perhaps they didn’t even know what that longing was, but we all have traces of Eden on us. We long for the days when the Father would walk in the cool of the day with us. Never is this more evident than in writing and creativity. I adore finding that in secular writing and seeing students discover it for themselves.
What has been your most memorable moment at Ben Lippen so far? My most memorable moment at BL so far is falling up the stairs at drama rehearsal last fall and breaking my foot.
What is your teaching style? Teaching style is something that I’ve tried to be really intentional about. One of my great passions for education is that my students will walk into their first class in college and feel confident that they can put pen to paper and articulate whatever their professors ask for. I want so badly to make students comfortable in their writing and to make them sure that they can trust themselves in note-taking and comprehension. When I put together my Monster & Metaphor class, I consulted my former professor and teaching mentor at the College of Charleston, Dr. Cynthia Lowenthal, and built the class based on a college course that she taught previously. It was extremely important to me that Monster be a glimpse of what college English will look like.