Who I am as a teacher:

• My biggest focus is on community building with students so that they can feel like a family and trust that I support them.

•  I have a strong belief that children are capable of understanding a lot more than we give them credit for.

• School can be a lot of fun, but in order to ensure that school is fun and educational, I like to use whatever materials I can-- from travel videos to zombies!

• I prefer to see myself as a facilitator and use projects for teaching concepts.

• Safe spaces mean (to me) a place where hard conversations can be had and learning can be done. It does not mean that we can’t talk about topics.

• Students come in with knowledge, they are not empty vessels, so my job is to help them build on what they already know.

• History is not static. It is a social science, which means that as we advance in technology and read about more voices from the past, our ability to discover expands. The application of research methods to history allows us to see history as inclusive in terms of the populations that existed and solutions to problems can be recycled to find solutions in the present. We sometimes discover that people from the past are maybe not so different as people in the present.