Welcome to my teaching portfolio.

I love doing projects with students. Behind each of them is a flexible approach to engagement based on meaningful connections, the design process, and cultivating transferable practices that blur disciplinary boundaries.

Scroll down for photos and descriptions of a sampling.

CV/Resume

Teaching Statement

After over a decade of working as an independent producer, teaching artist, and curriculum developer for grades k-12, I combined my personal creative practice with my educational experience and began a full time teaching job as the “Studio” (STEAM) teacher at the Workshop Middle School. While there (2019-22) I developed a curriculum and taught projects that worked through a cycle of carpentry, digital media, performance, and visual arts. I continued this work during the 22-23 school year, working as a STEAM specialist for grades k-8 at The Blue School. Following their closure, I began working part time as a STEAM teacher at the Senesh School and Bank Street School for Children.

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 a 3D modeling software. (SketchUp and Tinkercad). During this project, students researched materials, put together a budget, and used carpentry skills they’d built up over the past couple of years to construct the clubhouse.

Block Coding and 3D Modeling

Over the past 2 years I’ve lead students through basic game-making and adventures in coding as well as

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 either self portraits, or portraits of loved ones as gifts. During this project students discussed gender, race, color and contrast; and learned a variety of hand and machine sewing techniques.

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.