Graduate Work Portfolio
This page contains a collection of the work that I have completed that relates to strengthening students' connections to one another while expanding their understanding of the perspectives and cultural values that shape our global community. The work showcased here corresponds directly with my goals as an educator to use my classroom to promote social justice, and foster the skills necessary for global citizenship in the students I teach.
Community
As a teacher, I am committed to using my classroom as a place to try and help overcome division, ignorance and hatred.
Literature is central to this goal. I strive to expose my students to the types of literature that will hopefully help define them as reflective, engaged, empathetic citizens of this world.
In a nation where citizens are often polarized, and are unable to empathize with experiences or points of view that differ from their own, the significance of engendering and fostering empathy in students cannot be understated.
As Rudine Sims Bishop remarked in “Selecting Literature for a Multicultural Curriculum,” it is critical to remember that “when students are not provided the opportunity to develop empathy and understanding for others and/or when their experience and values are the only ones they are provided access to, they grow up to perpetuate racism.”
To avoid this, teachers have a responsibility to choose works for their classroom that offer a multitude of perspectives on what it is to be human. This has been and will continue to be, my goal as an educator.
This paper examines the way in which the selection of texts can help to develop students' abilities to empathize with others, as well as understand multiple perspectives. It synthesizes a number of theories on literature instruction and text selection, as well as current research on the impact of literature on the emotional development of readers. The paper ultimately reflects my goal as an educator to choose literature that will help to promote social justice and overcome intolerance and division.
One of my earliest papers from my graduate studies, this research paper marks the beginning of my understanding of the ways in which educators can use their classrooms to promote social change. In this case, my paper documents my use of historical fiction and primary source documents in my freshman Humanities course. The texts were chosen to help students develop perspective-taking, empathy and critical thinking.
This website provides information, resources and critical reviews for three different works of LGBTQ literature. The critical reviews examine the ways in which each work explores LGBTQ themes and how it might be used in the classroom to help students develop empathy and understanding for those who identify as LGBTQ.
A website devoted to LGBTQ literature, this culminating project is one of my favorite pieces of work from my graduate studies. The site provides a wealth of information on the history of LGBTQ literature, resources for finding and selecting age-appropriate texts from this genre, and valuable resources for promoting a safe and accepting school community. The site also features a blog with entries on using LGBTQ texts in the classroom and fighting institutionalized censorship. Finally, the site also provides a detailed lesson plan which I created to promote perspective-taking and empathy through creative writing.
This paper presents an argument against the reliance upon relatable texts in American classrooms. The paper is intended to serve as a call to action for teachers, encouraging them to work consistently and thoughtfully, through literature lessons and beyond to promote empathy, understanding, and tolerance. The paper emphasizes the power of literary fiction to support these goals and reminds readers that through choosing literature that is diverse and rendering it relatable, teachers can act as agents of change in a nation in need of healing.
