Cristina Hudgins is an English Language Arts teacher at Tupelo Middle School and a member of the Arts Integration team. She has been teaching 8th grade in the middle school since 2013. Before moving to Tupelo, Mississippi, Cristina taught 11th and 12th grade ELA and theater in the high school setting. She is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Secondary Education, as well as a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Development with a concentration on Teaching English as a Second Language. As a teacher for Tupelo Public Schools Cristina has also been a member of the Summer Curriculum team for the past three years. She utilizes this opportunity to incorporate the arts in the curriculum she helps to develop. She is passionate and dedicated to the development and enhancement of the ELA curriculum in the classroom and is always thinking about innovative ways to engage both educators and students by including the arts as a way to differentiate lessons and make the content more engaging.