1. Philosophy of Education
Why do I teach?
I was raised in diverse, low-income neighborhoods, and have seen personally the
negative effects of a poor education. I have spent many years volunteering with
underserved populations to give all children a fair chance to be informed voters,
good citizens, and successful in life. For me, teaching is the ultimate practice of
promoting social justice.
I have a long history of working with students from diverse backgrounds. I spent
five years as a volunteer with AWANA International as a leader, teaching
students from Spanish and Hindi language backgrounds, as well as students from
subsidized housing projects, and students with dyslexia. I have served on mission
trips to inner city San Francisco and New Delhi, India, and have volunteered as a
chef for a program in Paris that feeds the homeless and elderly. While living in
Paris, I also participated in the African Fellowship at the American Church in
Paris, which helped African immigrants in France share their cultural and
culinary background.
I currently sing with a gospel choir in Portland, which represented African-
American culture at the Northwest Folk Life Festival in Seattle on Memorial Day.
As part of this choir, I have also participated in fundraising events for charities
like 11:45, which promotes community and battles drug trafficking in the Boise-
Eliot neighborhood, and for churches like the predominantly African-American
Highland Christian Center on NE Glisan & NE 76th Street. The choir is also
gaining a reputation in the community for performing at gatherings like the vigil
for D’Andre Dickerson at Woodlawn Park.
Because I grew up in culturally diverse, low-income neighborhoods myself, I
know that a solid education is the best tool for students to become successful
citizens. My goal for all of my students is that they can become critical consumers
of information and will develop a personal discipline, tenacity, and resilience that
will serve them the rest of their lives. I also hope to impart a love of story, a
passion for reading, a love of the past because it informs the present, and a
curiosity that leads to new discoveries.
What do I teach?
I earned a Master of Arts in Teaching at the University of Portland with a
endorsement in secondary social studies. I earned a Bachelor’s degree at Lewis &
Clark College, with a major in theatrical performance and a minor in history, two
disciplines I have woven together to become a qualified and creative social
studies educator. As a professional educator, I will continue to research the
benefits of using performing arts in the social studies classroom, especially in
relationship to promoting and developing historical empathy among adolescents.
I like to teach using an inquiry approach that gives students the opportunity to

2. work with primary and secondary source documents, using the methods
promoted by Avram Barlowe and Sam Wineburg.
How do I teach?
In the context of the social studies curriculum, the guidelines, or instructional
best practices, that I follow are: promoting literacy, practicing historical thinking
skills, and designing instruction around multiple learning styles. The social
studies provide an opportunity to work on literacy skills that may not be
addressed in an English language arts classroom, such as practicing visual
literacy skills in the analysis of advertisements or propaganda posters, or by
reading and evaluating primary source documents, like treaties or census
records. Lessons that focus on historical thinking skills, like sourcing,
corroboration, and contextualization, promote critical thinking in general, which
can be applied to all facets of life, but especially to help students develop the skills
necessary tobe become critical consumers of information. Third, I like to
incorporate the fine and performing arts to address kinesthetic and visual
learning styles, as well as develop the practice of historical empathy.
I have used iPads in the classroom for students to conduct guided online research
using a WebQuest that I posted to the class Schoology account. I have also had
the students compare Google Earth to historical maps and traditional atlas maps
to answer questions of accuracy and reliability. Sites like the one for the Lascaux
caves in France allow students to virtually travel toand experience remote
locations. I have found Socrative to be a great tool for formative assessment and
Quizlet helps students learn vocabulary words. I have also used Twitter as part of
a unit on digital citizenship to illustrate how far and how quickly digital
footprints travel. I also use Twitter tolearn from other educators. I intend to
continue to learn new ways to incorporate technology into the classroom.
How do I measure my effectiveness?
I use pre-assessment and formative assessment to inform my instructional
choices, and use post-assessment to measure student learning gains. I use
multiple forms of formative assessment to check for understanding, including
online quizzes available from Socrative, peer assessment, self-assessment,
questioning, observation, exit slips, and traditional pen and paper quizzes. I use
formative assessment data to help determine whether I need to spend more time
on the covered material, or if I can proceed to new material. Tomeasure post-
assessment student learning gains, I primarily use EZAnalyze to perform the
statistical analysis of the collected data.