What is the biggest thing that you want students to take away from your class?

For my orchestra classes, I hope that students take away a sense of accomplishment and pride from studying an instrument in depth and working together as a team with the rest of the ensemble. For music history, I hope to have students deepen their appreciation for different styles of music and realize that they are never done learning.

What should students know about your style of teaching?

As far as my style of teaching goes, I like to have fun and make jokes, but I also want to make sure that we are using our time wisely and effectively.  Every class teaches me something new about how to be a better teacher — I am always learning.

What are some interests/hobbies you have outside teaching?

I love to read, bake and chase around my two little kids. I also do a lot of performing in different orchestras and groups around town as a violist.  

What is the biggest thing that you want students to take away from your class?

I want students to know that theater can happen anywhere there’s space, a story to tell and someone to watch that story being told. Theater can happen all around us, and it’s an amazing way to share the human experience.

What should students know about your style of teaching?

I like to think I’m enthusiastic and collaborative. I want to meet students where they are and make them feel happy and brave and ready to take artistic risks.

What are some interests/hobbies you have outside teaching?

When I’m not teaching or writing the words to musicals and operas I enjoy learning guitar, kayaking, cooking, and I’m pretty obsessed with The Beatles and Pac-Man.

What is the biggest thing that you want students to take away from your class?

I think I would really want my students to take away being curious and always questioning everything. I really think sometimes for students, especially in high school, they are kind of stuck in between childhood and adulthood and there isn’t much room for them to experience both at the same time. I just want them to have the space to be curious. 

What should students know about your style of teaching?

I’m still young in my teaching career, so I think my style right now is that I don’t have a style. I’m doing a lot of things, but I really want my students to know, my classroom is a space where everyone learns. I learn from them, they learn from me, it’s something where we both can collaborate and create a space that is safe for everyone who is in the room. 

What are some interests/hobbies you have outside teaching?

I am a reader. I’ve always been an avid reader. I really love music. I’m a big hip-hop head. music just makes sense to me in ways that other things don’t. I’m an English teacher, but I love math and science, and I do like weightlifting, as that’s the thing that keeps me going.

What is the biggest thing that you want students to take away from your class?

The primary thing that I want students to take away from my class is that history is everywhere and always. I hope that students will always feel comfortable, like, communicating with me about the class or anything else, because that’s the real heart of teaching — the ability to actually have honest and open communication. 

What should students know about your style of teaching?

I come from a college environment and I think that aligns really well with Lab’s expectations. At the same time, I consider myself to be like a very relaxed and understanding teacher, and the biggest thing that I want my students to know about me is that I’m flexible and communicative.

What are some interests/hobbies you have outside teaching?

I have a 3 ½-year-old, and he takes up my whole life, which is lovely. I’m also a guitarist. I play guitar pretty seriously. I play jazz and kind of like rock-ish music. I also like to run long distances.

What is the biggest thing that you want students to take away from your class?

I want kids to take away, like, a deep conceptual understanding of the topics that we cover that goes beyond just memorizing or applying like an algorithm or a formula. I want them to be able to understand why the mathematics work the way that they do. I want students to leave with a sense of a positive community where they felt seen and supported. 

What should students know about your style of teaching?

I think my teaching style is really approachable. I think a big barrier sometimes in mathematics is a fear of looking stupid. I never want students to have to worry about that. They can always come to me for support or help.

What are some interests/hobbies you have outside teaching?

I really enjoy a lot of different sports. I play basketball and run triathlons. I also do mountain biking and enjoy cooking, reading and music.

What is the biggest thing that you want students to take away from your class?

I would like students to take away a new perspective on other people’s experiences. I like literature, so I really like books and how they give the opportunity to expose us to a new way to imagine things and other people and expose us to new perspectives that we might have never had the opportunity to encounter before, so I would hope students get that opportunity from my class. 

What should students know about your style of teaching?

My style of teaching is what I call collaborative, so when I come in I like to say that I have all the don’t have all answers, because I don’t necessarily think that I do but it’s more so that we’re gonna come in here and we’re gonna think about literature and stories together and see what can come from that. 

What are some interests/hobbies you have outside teaching?

I am trying new restaurants and eating, and I like crocheting. I recently picked that up and I learned it from TikTok. 

What is the biggest thing that you want students to take away from your class?

I think a big thing I want students to take away is a love for math and problem solving and hopefully feeling like they can still be good at math and still like math and feel comfortable around it. 

What should students know about your style of teaching?

I think I like to do a lot of working on things in groups and I love to mix things up a bit. I just think a lot of working together and having students help each other. I really just want to facilitate that.

What are some interests/hobbies you have outside teaching?

I love cooking. I’m a big foodie, so I love doing that a lot. I want to get back into playing music. I used to play guitar a lot, so I want to do that a lot more. Currently my biggest hobby is cooking, by trying a lot of new recipes and getting new ingredients and trying out making new things.

What is the biggest thing that you want students to take away from your class?

After they have a conversation with me, I want students to understand that I care about them. My only goal is to help them reach their goals and advocate for what they need, so I want to offer a safe space for students to feel comfortable to come and talk.

What should students know about your style of teaching?

I tend to be really laid back, and we’ll just talk and talk and lose track of time. So I’m sorry if they’re late for class. I just really enjoy getting to know my students and hearing about their summers and things in their lives and supporting them. 

What are some interests/hobbies you have outside teaching?

I’m getting into kettlebell training. I like to go skiing. I am a retired swimmer and marathon runner. I also like to go hiking and just explore new towns and new neighborhoods.

What is the biggest thing that you want students to take away from your class?

I think the biggest thing is appreciation for all aspects and areas of theater. Theater is such a collaborative art form where we have not just actors, directors, and dramaturges, we have all the technical areas of theater. 

What should students know about your style of teaching?

I love to tailor how I teach to the students that I’m working with. So I don’t come into any certain class with a certain style of teaching. I really love to get to know all the students and tailor to their strengths and where they feel they would love to learn more. 

What are some interests/hobbies you have outside teaching?

I have two main hobbies, one is photography. The second hobby is all outdoor recreation, so hiking, backpacking, camping, etc. 

What is the biggest thing that you want students to take away from your class?

I think the biggest thing I want students to take away from the class is just whether they came into the class with a passion for photography or not be able to leave the class having a better understanding of photography as an art and just being able to use that to express themselves and help the world or their friends see their own unique perspective.

What should students know about your style of teaching?

One thing that makes my teaching style unique is that I really believe in collaboration and I want the students to feel as much ownership over the classroom and I do, because at the end of the day they are the ones that are creating art, so by the end of the school year when the walls are full of their photography I want that to be something for them to be proud of and know that they helped basically what this room became.

What are some interests/hobbies you have outside teaching?

I love traveling, and being in nature and hiking, which is a big passion of mine. I would also say animals in general. I have a cat that is 20 years old. I’ve had her since I was a teenager.