STRENGTHENING EDUCATOR COMMUNITIES
INDEPENDENT PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING AT HARVARD
I have earned Harvard Graduate School for Education's Instructional Leadership Certificate, which provides a theoretical framework to shape the work I currently do and have done in the past leading PLCs, leading to more productive collaboration and instructional design with teams I collaborate with and lead.
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Completed a Graduate Certificate in International Relations from Harvard Extension School. Coursework focused on international human rights law, the role of the Caribbean in global power systems, a social history of US occupation regimes from the 19th century to today, and the role of race and ethnicity in modern politics, allowing me to build relevance for many courses taught.
NATIONAL BOARD CERTIFICATION
In addition to my Professional Certification from New York State, I am accredited by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. This is by far the most rigorous professional certification the US-credentialed educator can achieve, as it requires continuous documentation, reflection, and action research on the success of our students. This status is revisited and peer-reviewed every five years with evidence of my continued growth's impact on student learning. According to NBPTS, Board Certified Teachers out-perform their colleagues in terms of student learning, collaboration, and data analysis.
COLLABORATION WITH THE COLLEGE BOARD
I have been involved in launching new AP programs at across many institutions, and have served as an AP Reader for AP US History (which uses the same rubrics and scoring guidelines as AP World History). Additionally, I am a founding teacher of our AP Capstone program, the newest element of the AP Curriculum. I teach AP Seminar, which mirrors the IB Theory of Knowledge course in many ways - focusing on students' presentation, collaboration, and research skills to enhance college readiness.
BUILDING WITH THE INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE ORGANIZATION
I am experienced with the teaching of the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) as well as the Diploma Programme (DP). Creating a more peaceful work through intercultural understanding and respect is fundamental to the work of any educator, and particularly to any effective Social Studies educator. Having implemented IB coursework at IB Continuum Schools, as well as those that offer both AP and internally assessed pathways alongside the MYP and Diploma, I am well equipped to integrate the IB Mission into classrooms of all types.
AT THE AMERICAN COMMUNITY SCHOOL OF ABU DHABI
TEAMBUILDING AND REVISION OF CURRICULUM
Over the course of my tenure at ACS, we have refreshed and revisited the curriculum for all of the courses I have been asked to teach. This allowed us to integrate more varied forms of assessment and was guided by meaningful analysis of student feedback collected throughout the years. Building a culture of collaboration, honesty, and risk-taking across the teams I create with has allowed us to do meaningful work centered around what is best for students, and share laughs and authentic joy along the way.
BUILDING AUTHENTIC, VITAL EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
It has been a complex few years for the Middle East. Add to that the extraordinarily dynamic nature of business and development in the Emirates and the extremely high quality of life and sense of safety our students enjoy and there can be a sense of disconnect between their day-to-day lives and the "outside world." From facilitating the refinement of our school's experiential learning with Cathryn Berger Kaye, to collaborating to rebuild our curriculum with Inspire Citizens, to building and leading transformative experiential learning aligned with Science, Geography, and Social Studies standards in Rwanda to explore conflict resolution and international law with Educational Travel Collaborative, my tenure here has revolutionized EBL at ACS with significant community accolades and support.
INVESTMENT AND ENGAGEMENT THROUGH RELEVANCY
ACS often describes itself as a "small school doing big school things" - in the high school, this means offering AP, IB, and blended pathways, providing student choice through a certain lens. In the classes I teach, I have been passionate and intentional about creating opportunities for students to build connections between academic content and their areas of interest and passion, and to develop the ability to execute their inquiry and communicate their learning in varied ways. Because of this intentionality, the perceived constraints of a program like the DP or AP become new opportunities for learning, competence, and expression.​
AT YOKOHAMA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING IN SPITE OF THE PANDEMIC
In collaboration with my teammates worked to provide on and off-campus experiential learning opportunities to motivate student-driven inquiry-based learning. Students met with representatives of indigenous communities virtually and in-person to explore the modern impacts of colonialism on members of their community, and in the world at large, explored the neighborhoods around our campus looking for evidence of their identity, and collaborated with peers and community members to solve issues of sustainability and scarcity that are shaping our globe today.
INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION
Implemented learning was relevant, interconnected, and grounded in students' interests and wondering. Interdisciplinary collaboration allowed educators to ensure that school remained relevant to students' real-world passions and that learning is meaningful and broadly explored. Collaboration across core subject areas as well as drama, music, art, and design made it clear to students that our classrooms, and the subjects we teach, are not disconnected silos of information but rather interconnected approaches to knowing and understanding the world around us.
VERTICAL ALIGNMENT
As the member of my team teaching the broadest breadth of students in terms of grade levels, I was uniquely positioned to be a part of the re-designs of numerous middle and high school units to better align them to both past and future learning. We have eliminated several redundancies in which students were taught the same skill multiple times in the same manner over the years. When planning is intentional, instruction improves and students' approaches to learning can be more carefully scaffolded for.
AT CAROL MORGAN SCHOOL
PRESENTING AT REGIONAL CONFERENCES
Involvement at conferences allows me to create a dialogue with educators from around the region and the world, to improve my own practice, bring new ideas to our school, and share best practices.
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I have had the privilege of participating in two TRI Association conferences, as an attendee in Santo Domingo in 2018, and as a presenter in 2019 in Monterrey.
CONTENT AND SKILL ALIGNMENT ACCROSS DIVISIONS
I was involved in a multi-year effort to select, amend, and implement content and skill standards for use in social studies classrooms in the middle and high school divisions. As the longest-serving foreign hire teacher in my division, I was involved in many of these meetings led by various administrators, which provided me with the capacity to view the standards from multiple perspectives and deeply understand their relevance to the work that we do in the classroom.
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE BASED LEARNING COACH
After successfully launching the high school divisions first "open" international experience-based learning opportunity - field research in collaboration with professors from Harvard and Arcadia University to Palestine, Jordan, and Tel Aviv, I was asked to work to build structures to allow more teachers to succeed in this realm, without having to build connections and understanding of school financial and policy structures from scratch.
Several new learning opportunities in the region were developed as a result my efforts, with greater transparency around academic standards alignment than in the past.
AT NEW VISIONS CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL FOR ADVANCED MATH AND SCIENCE (NVCHS AMS)
CURRICULUMÂ DESIGN AND TRAINING
As a teacher and leader at a newly established school, I had the opportunity to select resources and build curricula to support student learning. As we expanded, my role as department head allowed me to coach first-year teachers as well as those who were coming from a more traditional model.
Much of what I developed was adopted "network-wide," and was being used across nine schools by the time I left. This experience taught me how to work with others, revisit and revise approaches to student success, and build lasting structures meeting the needs of multiple stakeholders.
UFT ACTS REPRESENTATIVE AND NATIONAL SPEAKER
Although charter schools in the United States are not known to be friendly to unionization, during my tenure as chapter leader, school administrators and myself were able to collaboratively meet the needs of the Board, administrators, educators, and, ultimately, our students.
The result of these efforts led to the highest student achievement data and teacher retention in our network. This was recognized at AFT national conferences in Washington DC and New Orleans.
TABLE LEADER FOR NY REGENTS (STATE EXAM) SCORING
The New York Regents Exams are rigorous, common core aligned assessments that are required for graduation in New York State.
I was asked to serve as a scoring table leader for the NYS Regents Exams in both Global and US History for multiple years, ensuring that graders were applying the standards as envisioned by the state consistently and correctly. This work, vital for such a high-stakes exam that impacts graduation, deepened my ability to comprehend and implement common core standards across a variety of assignments.
PROJECT BASED LEARNING - THE GATES AND APPLE MODELS
Our school worked closely with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Apple's Challenge Based Learning Collaborative to implement and develop project-based learning and cross-curricular project-based assessments.
This process was collaborative and involved major innovators in education nationwide, which allowed me to lead a social studies department that worked hard to implement best practices and experiment with new ideas in a way that protected the best interests of our students and community.