This coming fall, she will direct a play at Tech. Bentley accumulated nearly a decade of teaching experience prior to coming to New Mexico Tech, having been a tutor, instructor, and graduate teaching assistant for most of her college career. I'm constantly learning new things about the community, so my learning curve needs to be steep before I can begin to prepare anything in a formal sense. Art and performance are natural vehicles for human expression and should serve positive individual and social change. I cannot imagine not teaching because I love working with people, finding out how they learn best, and most importantly, learning from them.
Good teaching involves active listening and a willingness to learn new things.
There's nothing quite like creating a complex piece of art with dialogue, settings, and bodies. . . . If I weren't teaching, I'd probably be a working performer and director with a theatre company. She currently is working on writing some of her own performance pieces, including a solo performance based on her love of the land combined with an oral history of her family as seen through the eyes of her own grandmother and other ancestors. When she's not teaching, researching, writing, or directing, Bentley does manage to find time to pursue some of her other favorite past times, such as cooking, birding, music, and hiking. I have a real strong connection to Nature, so it's serendipitous that I should come here. . . .