I first began working with children in 1980, when I served as a summer camp director in New York’s Bear Mountain State Park. After earning a degree in Sociology at SUNY Binghamton, I worked as a sous chef, a school bus driver, a development director for a non-profit and a cinema projectionist. In 1995, I earned a Masters in Education from Temple University. After five years as a high school teacher and grants administrator with The School District of Philadelphia, I enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania where I earned my Principal Certificate as well as a Master of Science degree in Educational Administration.

Over the years, I have facilitated school planning, professional development, and program enrichment for charter, independent and traditional public schools in Philadelphia, across the U.S. and in Morocco. I am presently teaching and co-writing science and history curricula at Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy. Both curricula emphasize student-centered, project-based learning. I also sponsor the ski and yoga clubs. In 2008, I was a finalist for the Lindback Foundation’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and in 2011 I received the NSTA’s National Award for Inquiry-based Science Education.

As a teacher, I enjoy helping my students develop the critical and creative thinking skills I believe are important to sustaining our civil democracy. I am especially proud of my students’ work in the African American history classes I have taught, which have employed ethnomusicology projects to examine liberty and equality as they relate to the US Constitution and African American history.