About me

I am an educator at heart. From my days as a teenaged summer camp counselor and horseback riding instructor, to later teaching Latin and Roman history at the college level, I’ve always tried to keep things engaging, exciting, accessible, and positive for whoever is learning. What’s the point of teaching if no one is learning?

In 2014, I earned my Ph.D. in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and began teaching as a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire. I was lucky to join a fabulous department and the Responsible Governance and Sustainable Citizenship Program, where I had the chance to design innovative, interdisciplinary courses in ethics and Classics. My most successful course was “Athens, Rome, and the Birth of the USA,” an inquiry-based, writing-intensive seminar on how the founders of the United States claimed classical inspiration.

When I studied the ancient Mediterranean, I found that it helped me understand my own world better, and I tried to help my students reach that understanding. I tap into what learners think is interesting or what’s relevant to them, and scaffold in connections to what I’m teaching. When I taught a summer class at Penn about Cicero’s speeches (finally, a captive audience!) and today’s political rhetoric, one student wrote in his evaluation that everyone should have to take a course on this topic. In the Netherlands on a postdoc, I taught “Citizenship in Cicero’s Speeches” to Dutch, Italian, and American colleagues, and we had long conversations about immigration, identity, and colonialism in each of our countries.

I also taught and published on Latin, ancient Greek, Roman civilization, and other topics, to some delightfully enthusiastic nerds. I even got to teach students studying abroad at Temple’s campus in Rome – at least, until the pandemic shut us down.

In 2020, I left the classroom and started working as an instructional designer and curriculum developer, helping professors to move their courses online and implement training in civic skills and community-engaged learning. We worked together to create formative assessments that would facilitate learning, not feel like a punishment. I worked with professors at community colleges, HBCUs, Minority Serving Institutions, and state universities in disciplines from counseling and nutrition to engineering and film studies. At The Citizens Campaign, I translated practitioner strategies into classroom teaching tools, and facilitated professional development for professors and high school teachers. As it turned out, teaching outside the classroom was even more fun (no grading!). I used my own classroom experience but had more time and energy to spend on creating meaningful, engaging learning experiences – and I was supporting educators who were even more burned out than I had been. And that’s exactly what I continue to do now.

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