Where do you currently teach?  What do you teach?

I teach 4th grade at Campus International School K-8. I also coach the middle school soccer team. CIS is an International Baccalaureate program that starts from kindergarten and goes to our high school.

What inspired you to join the corps?

I actually knew I wanted to teach before joining the corps, but I wanted to surround myself with people who were committed to changing the field of education. I wanted to use the education system to tackle the inequality facing our world, and TFA was one of those organizations with that goal.

What projects have you done with your students this year? What projects are you looking forward to?

I've been working with my class and my 4th grade team to develop a social emotional curriculum over the past few years. We've been partnering with the psychology department and the educational research department at Cleveland State University. The curriculum aims to help children navigate social emotional conflict and build social emotional skills using the language of children's rights laid out by the United Nations International Emergency Children's Fund (UNICEF). It has led to a shift in my classroom that I hope leads to higher levels of advocacy within my class.

What do you love about teaching in Greater Cleveland?

I've loved getting to know a new place so intimately. I feel that if you jump into a classroom anywhere, and you choose to meaningfully engage with the families you're working with, it's like you have your finger on the pulse of a community. Being invited to be a part of that community has been a wonderful experience over the past five years.

What is one piece of advice that you have for our incoming corps of teachers?

Learn from your neighbor. Leave your computer and go talk to your team. There have been times when papers were not graded and emails were not sent on time because I chose to eat lunch with a few mentor teachers. The wisdom and laughs shared over crummy sandwiches in 35 minutes can do wonders for your spirit.

Share about a time a student made you laugh in your classroom this year.

When teaching about the Line of Proclamation of 1763 (attention history nerds), I randomly put a tape line down the middle of my room and stated no one could cross that line unless they paid a dollar. This, naturally, sparked outrage. About 8 students didn't have a seat, and almost all of the classroom resources were on the wrong side of the room. One student actually gave me a dollar so she could cross the line to use a computer. When she picked that computer up and gave it to a different student on the other side of the line, you could have heard a pin drop in the room. "Someone brought an item from the illegal side of the room and smuggled it across to the legal territory." "Can you do that?" "Does she have to pay more money!?" The whispers started. All I offered in response was, "Figure it out. You have a problem. How can you beat it?" They spent the rest of the day trying to cheat and test the new "law," in our class. It gave us laughs and tons of things to build off of in future conversations when we covered the topic in our history lessons.