Welcome to my teaching portfolio.

I love doing creative projects with students. Behind each is a flexible approach to engagement based on meaningful connections, the design process, artistic exploration, and cultivating skills that transcend any individual project.

Scroll down for photos and descriptions of a sampling.

CV/Resume

Pedagogy

Projects

Mosaic Back Splash

Collaborative design and mosaic work with 6-8th graders. Students worked in small groups coming up with their own designs while considering the overall cohesion of the project. Tools/Skills taught and utilized: jig saw, screw guns/drivers, mosaic design, tile nippers, and mixing and applying adhesive and grout.

🪚 Tiny House Build 🔨

This was a culminating project for 7th graders. Students worked in small groups designing this clubhouse. They learned introductory technical drawing skills and then created a 3D model of their design in SketchUp and Tinkercad. During this project, students researched materials, put together a budget, and used carpentry skills they’d built up over a couple of years to construct the clubhouse.

Technology

Tech integration for grades 2-8 including teaching students to use the google suite, block coding, 3D modeling and VR environmental design.

When teaching tech, my focus is on familiarizing students with a broad array of platforms. The speed at which tech moves will require students to be adaptable and always learning. With that in mind, I do surveys of age appropriate tech platforms, teaching the basics and empowering students to use these platforms for projects across disciplines.

Workshop Kids Take Flight!

This carpentry and photography mixed media project brought together students' carpentry and photography skills to create a piece of art for the school lobby.

I showed students a sketch of them collectively flying and asked them “How could we make this?” In small groups, they then brainstormed how to bring a year’s worth of skills together to make this idea a reality. They took photos of each other in “flying” postures. They masked, desaturated, and printed the photos. They then traced them onto plywood where they cut them out with either a coping or scroll saw.

Conversations around this project included the topics of aesthetic cohesion, spacing, size, perspective, and body language and self-expression. We reviewed teaching points from earlier in the year that involved a variety of tools and processes and came together to create an awesome piece of art for the school lobby.

🎉 Ferris Wheel 🎉

Portrait Photography

During this project students learned about 2 point lighting and experimented with colored gels. Their goal was to separate the subject from the background with the two differently colored lights. Students played with manual and auto settings. All photos were taken by students on a Sony A7 camera.

Fabric Portraits

After learning about the genre blending work of Bisa Butler, students created self portraits and portraits of loved ones. During this project students used Butler’s work as an access point to discussing issues surrounding race and gender, learned hand and machine sewing techniques, and discussed aesthetics (contrast, patterns and color).

Pinewood Derby

Rather than go with pinewood racer kits, students designed their own cars and shaped them using scroll, band and miter saws. Students exercised voice and choice, creating their own cars. We had to-go sushi racers, ice cream sandwich racers, and even the stair truck from “Arrested Development”. Students then calculated velocity and displacement of their racers.