Teaching

Education has always been central to my life and my upbringing. My great-grandmother was trained at the Butte Business College as a private secretary. My maternal grandmother was a career middle and high school social studies teacher, and a teachers’ union member, leader, and negotiator. Her sister and niece were teachers, too. My maternal grandfather was a career middle school math teacher. My paternal grandmother graduated high school at 16 years old and went on to train as a nurse at Montana State College. My father was a non-traditional college student who earned his bachelors in his 40s, who now teaches business practicum classes as an adjunct. He served on the school board in our small eastern Montana community when my brother was in high school. My mother earned her masters while I was in grade school and is a university administrator. My parents were students when I was in elementary school. I loved school: my school, my parents’ school, my grandparents’ classrooms.

My family’s background with education shapes how I approach learning, teaching, pedagogy, and work. Education is a public good and a right. Students are central to teaching. Teachers deserve fair wages, safe working conditions, and curriculum control. Not every student is the same. No career path is a straight line. I keep all of this in mind when I enter a classroom, whether in person or virtually. I strive to create an inclusive learning environment where together we can tackle difficult subjects with rigor, compassion, and enthusiasm, to learn from the past so that the future might be brighter.

My aim in the classroom is to help students make connections to what they’re doing in class to what they want to do in the future. History and cultural studies are meaningful fields for every career, major, and lifetime. I coach writing for clarity of communication and construction of argument. I advise presentations and projects as honing collaborative skills and management habits. Research may look very different in every field, but it is integral to almost every profession to understand how to survey relevant literature, gather evidence, and present cases. For those who are history or cultural studies majors, or just otherwise particularly interested in history courses, I focus on helping students take ownership of their own research interests, including developing academic questions, understanding historical context, and the careful task of relating the present to the past without imposing our own experiences onto those who came before us.

I have experience as an educator and academic mentor with k-12 students, college students, and adults. I taught English as a Second Language with Learning Enterprises – Hungary and Slovakia in 2015 to students from age 5 to 60. I was an undergraduate teaching assistant for the Georgetown University American Studies Program core curriculum. I mentored students from 3rd grade to 8th grade at the Washington Nationals Youth Baseball Academy, in both English-Language Arts study skills and life skills. I have worked as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as a Supplemental Instruction (SI) Leader. In place of mandatory discussion sections for undergraduates, UT offers voluntary collaborative student enrichment and study sessions directed by SI leaders who train with the Sanger Learning Center. At UT, I have also attended the Faculty Innovation Center Teaching Preparation Series, and completed the Inclusive Classrooms Leadership Certificate Seminar, the History Department Pedagogy Colloquium, and the Supervised Teaching in History graduate course (HIS 398-T).

I am prepared to teach U.S. History survey courses, as well as courses in Environmental History, Labor History, Leisure and Sports History, Cultural History, History of the U.S. West, American Women’s History, and other courses as needed. I am dedicated to mentorship and available to consult on projects for students and practitioners alike.