ON TEACHING:
I have been writing and teaching for over 30 years, working with people of all ages, backgrounds and stories to unleash the imagination and challenge the status quo in both our personal and political lives.
I come from a family of educators. My father taught English in Chicago Public Schools as well as ESL & jazz studies for adults. My mother also trained as an educator and always approached life as a curious traveler. I completed teacher training at the Chicago Academy for the Arts and later got my masters in education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, with a focus on pedagogies of the imagination and liberatory education.
My passion for teaching took me out of the traditional classroom and into the halls, fields and porches of the everyday. I've taught in community centers, foster homes, alternative education programs, after school programs and higher education spaces and partnerships as well as a myriad of nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations. Later, I took on a leadership role in international education and cultural exchange as a resident director in Zanzibar and worked on advanced Swahili curriculum development with teachers at the State University of Zanzibar.
My approach to teaching and learning is intentionally collaborative, student-centered, social-justice oriented, and impassioned by the arts as the fundamental heart beat of learning and being. Teaching is a form of becoming, instilling in us the courage to imagine, and in do so, the willingness "to see things as if they could be otherwise."
I come from a family of educators. My father taught English in Chicago Public Schools as well as ESL & jazz studies for adults. My mother also trained as an educator and always approached life as a curious traveler. I completed teacher training at the Chicago Academy for the Arts and later got my masters in education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, with a focus on pedagogies of the imagination and liberatory education.
My passion for teaching took me out of the traditional classroom and into the halls, fields and porches of the everyday. I've taught in community centers, foster homes, alternative education programs, after school programs and higher education spaces and partnerships as well as a myriad of nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations. Later, I took on a leadership role in international education and cultural exchange as a resident director in Zanzibar and worked on advanced Swahili curriculum development with teachers at the State University of Zanzibar.
My approach to teaching and learning is intentionally collaborative, student-centered, social-justice oriented, and impassioned by the arts as the fundamental heart beat of learning and being. Teaching is a form of becoming, instilling in us the courage to imagine, and in do so, the willingness "to see things as if they could be otherwise."