The Historian's Toolbox

Experience teaching Political Science Honors, US History and World History. Additional experience working in a Co-Taught classroom and a Special Education classroom. *In the 2023-2024 school year, I will be introducing a new Dual Credit class. This course will cover American History content from precolonial-1865.*

I prefer a student centered classroom and I involve a lot of work with primary sources. Reading Comprehension is incredibly important in my classroom. Many of the students in my co-taught classroom are behind in reading level. Therefore, you will see a lot of focus on short texts and understanding main ideas in my assignments. I also have a common assessments that shows up in many of my assignments: the Evidence-Based Paragraph. This paragraph was created to support students while using historical writing skills. Many of my assignments focus heavily on historical skills. I refer to these assignments as "Historian's Toolboxes." They are meant to be summative assessments to be used at the end of a unit, however, they can be used however one wishes! Each "toolbox" includes four assignments that relate to specific skills: Primary vs. Secondary Sources, Inferencing, Corroboration vs. Dissent and Sourcing. Again, these are the main skills of history that students need in order to be successful in history courses.

"Protest as an American Tradition: Narrative Discourse in the American History Survey" published 2021 in "Teaching History: A Journal of Methods" James Todd Wilborn Award in History (ISU) Miglio Scholarship (ISU) Gleynafa T. Ray Award for Excellence in Classroom Instruction (ISU) Howard Romanek Social Studies Education Award (ISU) Inducted in Phi Alpha Theta- National History Honor Society (ISU) Helen M. Cavanagh Award for the Best Masters Student (ISU)

Illinois State University Bachelor of Science in History- 2017 Master of Science in History- 2022

I also teach a course at Illinois State University. This course introduces pre-service social studies teachers to teaching the social sciences. Students take this course the semester before their student teaching experience.