I grew up on a thoroughbred horse ranch in Northern California near Santa Rosa. I’ve
lived in San Diego, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Oakland, Cluj (Romania), Prague,
Reno, Bottineau (ND), and Thief River Falls (MN). I earn a B.A. in History in 1991
and Social Studies Teaching Credential in 2001 from Sonoma State University. I taught
in K-12 schools for 16 years in Oakland and Santa Rosa. I worked 8 years in special
education and 8 years in public secondary schools. After caring for my father for
3 years, I went to graduate school. I earned a M.S. in Education in 2010 and a Ph.D.
in History in 2017 from the University of Nevada, Reno.
Before arriving at Trinidad State College, I taught Core Humanities courses and U.S.
History of the Roaring Twenties at University of Nevada, Reno; World Geography, Introduction
to Sociology, History of Popular Music, and History surveys at Dakota College at Bottineau;
and History surveys at Northland Community and Technical College. I am a member of
the History of Education Society, American Historical Association, Organization of
American Historians, and the Popular Culture Association.
My courses revolve around empowering students to take charge of their education, demonstrating
how persistence helps us achieve successful outcomes, and acquiring the skills to
be being conscientious individuals, dedicated professionals, and engaged citizens.
As a foundational pedagogical principle, I emphasize developing these skills though
active learning opportunities, including peer collaboration, experiential learning,
integrative curriculum, and interactive instruction. Students learn most effectively
when they are involved in the construction of knowledge; when teachers encourage them
to ask thought-provoking questions and engage in critical reflection on possible answers;
and when history is made accessible to students, relevant to their lives, and applicable
to “real world” issues. My role as a teacher is to mentor students in the process
of constructing historical knowledge and to facilitate their critical engagement in
the work of historians. My ultimate aim is for students to be able to think, argue,
and create like historians. As a result, my courses create opportunities for students
to do history.
The focus of teaching and research is on developing a better understanding of human
diversity. From my first teaching position to my latest university post, I worked
with students and colleagues from diverse set of backgrounds. I strive to understand
where students are in order to get them where they are going. To facilitate understanding,
I strive to communicate regularly and clearly with students in and out of the classroom
using all available technologies, times, and spaces. This communication helps me to
better understand how to meet individual students’ learning strategies and educational
goals. I also seek opportunities to empower students to take charge of their education.
I construct assignments around opportunities for students to engage with each other
in purposeful dialogues. These interactions reinforce the value of listening, collaborating
to analyze content in order to develop an evidence-based argument, and incorporating
multiple perspectives into a thoughtful narrative. Next, I organize my courses around
exploring historical sources created by a diverse set of scholars and actors. These
individuals offer unique interpretations that can support, encourage, and expand students’
learning. Finally, my service to my profession, college, students, and community focuses
primarily on highlighting the diversity of human experience. These explorations allow
me to construct curriculum that helps students with their own connections and relationships
to being “different” and/or “normal” to build cognitive empathy for historical actors,
themselves, and each other. I am resolved to continue these critical, reflective,
and thoughtful engagements with diverse local and global communities.
As a cultural historian, my research highlights the interconnectivity between human
agency, structural factors, and significant events. I focus on the interrelationships
among class, gender, politics, race, and sexuality in constructing professional and
subcultural identities. My research includes how American teacher organizations used
Cold War discourses to lay claim to and gain affirmation of teacher professionalism;
how Cold War gender and sexuality norms intersected with popular representations about
and personal identities among the Beats; and how the performance and commodification
of Indian mascots’ primitiveness complicated (and continue to complicate) Native American
personhood. I am currently working on a book proposal, Creating Cold War Role Models,
in which I demonstrate how the AFT and NEA utilized the ascending popular representations
of “hero” (white male) teachers, the population explosion of the Baby Boom era, and
Cold War discourses of Americanism, consumerism, democracy and U.S. world leadership
to lay claim to and gain affirmation of K-12 teacher professionalism. Both organizations
consciously associated K-12 teachers with dominant cultural constructions of whiteness
and masculinity, including patriotic Americanism, full citizenship, professional autonomy,
and recognized expertise.
