The central goal of my English education teaching is to model equitable instructional practices that foster an inclusive classroom community where all students find opportunities that illuminate, challenge, and equip them with possibilities for their future teaching and learning. Over 20 years of teaching experience experience in secondary and post-secondary as well as urban, suburban, and rural classrooms serves as an asset in my ongoing efforts to prepare and support English language arts (ELA) teachers. I’ve served as a teacher leader, literacy coach, and professional development facilitator in support of teachers’ ongoing learning and instructional goals. This unique breadth and depth of experience lends me “street credibility” in exploring through my teaching and scholarship the ever-changing challenges and expectations as well as joys of teaching English in middle and high schools.
Courses Taught
- Teacher Action Research Methods (ENG 437)
- Critical Conversations in the Teaching of English (ENG 395/435)
- Fall 2020 – Topic: Remixing Tradition
- Description: Many ELA teachers are committed to socially just instruction. But, our commitments can be tested when we work within traditional models of schooling and ELA instruction that are premised on maintaining the status quo and systems of inequity. In part the challenge comes from recognizing how these educational systems and approaches have denied some students’ full involvement in mainstream economic, political, cultural, and social traditions because of their identification with racial, ethnic, class, religious, sexual, gender, ableist, or other intersecting marginalized characteristics. In part the challenge also comes from recognizing our own role as ELA teachers working within these traditions to affect change. Recognizing these realities can lead to a sense of overwhelming inevitability that can make us question whether we can make a difference. In this class, we’ll reimagine and co-construct ways of revolutionizing our ELA teaching for justice by drawing on and adapting the work of remixing in pop culture, art, and critical literacy.
- Spring 2022 – Topic: Socially Just Classroom Interactions
- Description: English teachers, no matter the courses we teach, seek to engage students in the study of language. For those teachers who adopt a framework for socially just instruction that theorizes how learning occurs through social interactions in classroom cultures, we intuitively know classroom language matters, too. Classroom discourse—what we say and do (or not), what students say and do (or not)—shapes learning. From a social justice lens, classroom discourse holds the potential to both open and foreclose learning opportunities. Historically and presently, schools and the inequitable systems of schooling we work within have excluded certain populations of students from those opportunities, at times endeavoring to assimilate students into majority ideologies and ways of learning. Students’ identities and lived experiences position them disparately and inequitably to draw on the strengths of their cultural knowledge, linguistic gifts, and potential in support of their learning and contributions to the world—in classrooms and beyond. But research affirms and socially just teachers also know that they hold the power to intervene and use their discourse to challenge discriminatory status quo policies, practices, and systems. This course sits at the nexus between past and future, unique classroom communities and systems of education, as well as individuals and social groups and invites course participants to consider their situated perspectives and identities as ELA teachers in relation to those with whom we teach, learn, and seek solidarity. Together, we’ll explore various theoretical, research, and practical approaches to studying classroom discourse in order to identify opportunities for strengthening our ability to work every day, in-the-moment and across time in support of all students’ learning.
- Fall 2020 – Topic: Remixing Tradition
- Teaching and Diverse Writers (ENG 297)
- Teaching Diverse Readers and Texts (ENG 296)
- Introduction to English Education (ENG 194)