I come from a family of teachers: my mother, sister, stepmother, aunt, cousin, and stepfather are all teachers! I’ve spent my whole life in and around schools, and can’t imagine it any other way. My path to teaching has been a bit different from my relatives, though– I have no formal training in education, and have taught at community colleges, universities, and now a private K-12 school. I’ve taught everything from fine arts to popular culture to parents, soldiers, teenagers, plumbers, electricians, and high-school drop-outs.
I began teaching in classes on cultural pluralism and media studies, beginning in graduate school and continuing to my favorite adjunct gig at my own alma mater. During 2008, I taught a 300-level special topics course titled “Facebook Culture”, which you can read more about at that link. In the spring of 2009, I taught a course on media and communications theory. I taught media and popular culture courses for eight years, and it has literally changed the way I think about the world we live in.
I’m also in my fifth year teaching literature and writing, which has been a wonderful experience as well. Blogs written by English teachers have been a great source of information and resources for me, and you can find links to them in my blogroll on the main page of this blog.
If you want to know more about what I’ve found digging through the web, and what I’ve found useful, please wind your way through my pages on lesson planning with reading, online archives and webquests, literature and poetry. These resources are all meant with grades 9-12 in mind, because that’s the age group I teach. I would love to hear from you if anything you find here is helpful to you.
