By training, I am a historian; by vocation, I am a high school and early college teacher. I work at a selective public school in New York City where students complete two years of college-accredited coursework and earn an associate's degree along with their high school diploma. While my doctoral research focused on the colonial Caribbean, the majority of my teaching now centers on United States history. I also teach interdisciplinary college courses whose syllabi run the gamut of the social sciences and humanities. In my prior life as an aspiring academic, I taught, TAed, and worked at the writing center at Duke University--experiences I take with me into the classroom today.Â
My pedagogical approach is both informed by the latest educational research (I hold an MEd in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on literacy from the University of Virginia and two teaching certificates from the Duke University Graduate School) and grounded in a commitment to time-tested methods, genres, and modes of assessment. Thus, for instance, while many of my assignments are creative, allowing students to demonstrate learning through a variety of written and visual forms, I believe strongly in teaching the fundamentals of argumentative writing as epitomized by the genre of the academic essay. I am very opposed to the use of generative AI in education. For more on that, see my Substack and the AI Policy I use in all of my classes.
To view my CV and a list of my academic writing, please visit my academia.edu page.