I came to teach high school English in New York City through the New York City Teaching Fellows program in 2002. Before, I worked in college admissions and university development and ran an after-school learning program that served 4-14 year-olds. The satisfaction in each experience has been the same, to learn the needs of students, families, and communities and seek to serve them. Nowhere has this endeavor been more fulfilling, though, than as an urban public school teacher.

In three years of organizing cross-age tutoring programs, I have seen my freshmen's attitudes toward reading, writing, and the importance of school change as they taught third and fourth graders reading and writing strategies. Directing a summer leadership academy at Phillips Exeter, I saw teens from my community, some of whom rarely ventured outside a 50-block radius, strengthen their resolve to attend a select college or prep-school. In a journalism class I helped turn emerging writers into critical journalists that won two first-place prizes from the New York Civil Liberties Union for investigative reporting and inspired some to attend Princeton's Summer Journalism Program. Recently, one of my Pre-AP English students, who studied English as a second language as a freshman, passed the AP English Literature and Composition Exam. Strengthening adolescent literacy, ensuring college preparedness for all, and urban school improvement are my policy interests. On school committees tasked with improving teaching and assessing priorities, I have played an active role. In the community, I have helped refine Literacy Inc.'s instructional materials and develop New Heights' Leadership Academy. In 2008, I was honored to become a Title I Nationally Board Certified Teacher, a finalist for the New York City Teaching Fellows Award for Classroom Excellence, and a participant in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Measure of Teacher Effectiveness Project. In my teaching, I value principles of Formative Assessment, Differentiated Instruction, and Understanding by Design. I studied Literature at Eckerd College, the classics at St. John's (Santa Fe, NM), and teaching at City College.