pratt institute (2017-2020)
As a Visiting Instructor at Pratt Institute, I taught two undergraduate courses, both of my own design: American Urban Education and Creative Cultural Organizing.
In Creative Cultural Organizing, students explore a wide range of contemporary practices at the intersection of the arts and community organizing through readings, guest speakers, field trips, and hands-on workshops. The course includes collaboration with the Brooklyn Movement Center, a member-led multi-issue organization in Central Brooklyn.
In American Urban Education, students explore contemporary issues in public education through the lens of geography, identity, and power. In particular, students analyze the New York City school system and its position at the nexus of long-term political, economic, and social processes of inequitable urban development. The course culminates in a multimedia presentation based on field research in a local public school.
HISTORY ON BROADWAY! (2013-2018)
As a Senior Educator at the New-York Historical Society, I created History on Broadway, a new outreach program for grades 4-11. This five-session residency uses songs and scenes from classic American musicals to deepen students' engagement with American history and popular culture. Students build critical thinking skills by analyzing film clips and song lyrics along with primary sources. They then use role-playing and other dramatic exercises to consider the challenges people faced in the past.
I developed and piloted the curriculum for six distinct units, covering a wide scope of American history with a focus on the stories left untold in popular narrative. They include:
1776 and the American Revolution
Paint Your Wagon and the Gold Rush
Oklahoma! and Westward Expansion
Annie and the Great Depression
On the Town, This is the Army, and World War II
West Side Story and Postwar New York