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"Learning without thinking is labor lost;

thinking without learning is dangerous."

--Confucius

Literature Classes

Classes 

Debate
Public Speaking

About Me 

Background and Education

 

     Born and raised in Anderson, Indiana, I attended Purdue University and studied abroad at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.  Upon graduating, I moved to Illinois to begin my teaching career at Edwardsville High School in 2003.  

     In 2008 I earned a master's in Education from Washington University in St. Louis and completed a master's in American Culture Studies there in 2019.

     Some of my most rewarding professional experiences include: my work as a fellow in the 2011 Piasa Bluffs Writing Institute (sponsored by the National Writing Project); being a Group Study Exchange member to Sweden for a month in 2012 (sponsored by Rotary International); and participating in four different teacher workshops sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities: "Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution" in Massachusetts (2013), "The Rochester Reform Trail" in New York (2015), "Forever Wild: The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era" also in New York (2016), and "Living and Writing Deliberately:  Henry David Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts" (2017).  During the 2018 summer, I participated in teacher institutes at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., and with the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Chicago. In 2021, I was a fellow in the three-week-long Teacher Institute hosted virtually by the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia sponsored by the NEH and I ran a two-hour teacher workshop sponsored by the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.  This summer I was a fellow at the Gilder-Lehrman summer seminar hosted by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

     I love to read, watch movies, spend time with friends and family, and travel. 

 

Check out my blog from traveling to Sweden:

Sweden Blog

 

 

Extra Curricular Activities

 

  I am the sponsor for Debate Club, Ethics Bowl, and Film Society.

 

  Please click on the following links to find out more.

 

Debate Club (and Ethics Bowl)

Film Society

Extra Curriculars 

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