The mission of Empress Land is to provide intensive community outreach in the form of academic intervention, tutoring, mentoring, consulting and storytelling, giving a voice to at-risk populations of women and children in order to support the cause of personal empowerment, individual freedom and intellectualism.
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Staff Contact Information:
Della McGuire, M. Ed.
Founder and Grant Writer
850 582 8487
dellanicole@empressland.org
Aneisa Fox
Research and Administration
admin@empressland.org
Cherylin Schutt
Creative Writing and Art Director
http://alchemybycherylin.blogspot.com/
Karisha Shaw
PR and Theatrical Consultant
schmulebs@netscape.net
SAFE ESCAPE
Empowerment through Education
History and Mission
History and Philosophy: I have been a freelance private tutor for over seven years and I have worked with local schools as well as with tutoring agencies. I earned my Master’s Degree in Reading Education in December of 2007 from the University of West Florida. I feel that reading is a fundamental and foundational source of all other knowledge, regardless of the content of the information. Currently, I am pursuing a Master of Arts in Storytelling at East Tennessee State University as an extention of my activism in literacy. As such, my tutoring interests and abilities are as far ranging as my experience. I have a love of language interpretation, making my talents suitable for nearly every subject area. I started this organization to show that everyone can learn if shown how to access and share the information. I ascribe to the Empiricists’ view of learning as a Tabula Rasa, or blank slate. Anyone can learn anything if given the opportunity to create their knowledge base from scratch while including seemingly irrelevant personal experience memories and stories to connect ideas and formulate new ones. I have spent my life teaching people to become impassioned about learning. This work has been my life’s calling ever since I started learning myself. I love to show reluctant or at-risk learners the powerful intrinsic benefits, excitement and pleasure of education.
A Letter from our Founder
Before starting school, I forced my family to play school with me all the time. In kindergarten I was tested and asked to be moved to the second grade. I declined on the notion that it would impede my social development and I would only go to the reading class with the older kids. In elementary and middle school, I was a peer tutor. In high school, most of my friends were books, but I found myself quite popular during the formation of study groups. People who never talked to me before would sit near me during tests. During my Associate’s Degree at Northwest Florida State College, I explored several possible majors and found myself in love with both sociology and philosophy as a means by which I would have the chance to understand as much as possible about the patterns of human thought.
At Florida State University, I was able to tutor for the Student Disabilities Service Center. My students there ranged from those with serious learning difficulties to a broken writing hand for note taking assistance. While researching for the Social Science Data Center, I learned how to conduct interviews to determine a client’s range of knowledge on a given subject. I was especially drawn to microsocial, qualitative data collection methods and ethnographic studies of the human story as it applies to groups and individuals.
I traveled in Europe with the FSU International Student Program and practiced sociocultural linguistics by learning and teaching various linguistic expressions. In Ireland I met a woman who integrated storytelling with group therapy and women's empowerment and was inspired to follow her methodology. After graduation from FSU, I qualified for Mensa membership, a social group open to the top two percent of IQ scores, though I am largely inactive, and I joined the International Reading Association. Recently, I found the National Storytelling Network and they have made it possible to start this organization by sponsoring my project.
Sincerely,
Della Nicole McGuire, M. Ed.
Founder and Empress
