Eccentric Academic

I've been a teacher for 14 years. I'm currently teaching Art II, III, IV, Graphic Design, and Multimedia Productions. Previously I taught Gifted, English, and Psychology courses, which I also love dearly. For pretty much every course that I've taught I've had to develop my curriculum from scratch. It's exhausting but super fun! Over my career I have taught the following courses: Gifted English I-IV, DE Psychology 101, Art I-IV, Fine Arts Survey, Graphic Design (Adobe certification), Multimedia Production (Adobe certification), regular ed. English II, III, and IV, and READ 180. I've also taught Freshman Comp and British Lit at university and was a piano teacher for six years. I have rewritten an entire English 2 common core unit for my district, so I'm accustomed to the standards and methods of approaching them. I've also written curricula for a major education company, including testing questions and an 80 page history unit. Lastly, I've applied my background as an Art and Design undergrad into the design elements of my lessons.

My main goal for my students is for them to develop their own perspective and to be able to properly express or defend it. I try to make complex subject matter humorous whenever possible.

My students have earned a number of poetry, fiction, and essay writing awards and have excelled remarkably on the English portions of the ACT. My art students have placed in state and national competitions as well. My personal honors are mostly from my time as a student. Summa Cum Laude as both a Graduate and Undergraduate university student. Otherwise I've had some writing published and exhibited at a few art shows.

Masters in English with additional Masters studies in Gifted Education Bachelors in Visual Art - concentrations in painting and graphic design / digital media. I was also on an Honors track as an Undergrad with a minor earned in English.

I am a huge nerd for Literature, History... essentially all of the Humanities subjects. I try to make many of my lesson plans all-inclusive, placing emphasis on historical relations to the work being read, the arts of that period, etc. It's my goal to have students really appreciate the Classical Studies / Humanities subjects in such a STEM-driven world.