Experience Summary
I received my Masters in Poetry from the University of Michigan in 2011, where I was awarded a Zell Postgraduate Fellowship, and where I currently teach in the English Department. This will be my 6th summer on the Creative Writing Faculty at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, where I world primarily with high school poetry majors. I have a chapbook (Michigan Writers Associated Press. 2009), and have publications in journals such as The Dunes Review and The Smoking Poet.
Teaching Style
I had a wonderful teacher once who quoted a line from a Richard Brautigan book that went, "My teachers could easily have ridden with Jessie James for all the time they stole from me." He told us about making a promise to himself, when he began teaching, that he would never be the sort of teacher a student could say this about. I made the same promise when I began teaching. I have been blessed with some tremendous, inspirational teachers, and, like most of us, I have also had the lousy ones (the ones who admire test scores above creativity, who stack their bookshelves with textbooks instead of poems and stories, who prefer power to respect). My goal every day as a teacher is to work in a way that will bring me closer to those gifted teachers, and that will make the less than inspirational teachers shake their heads. In other words, I respect my students as human beings. I genuinely value the time they give to me each day. I feel very blessed to be able to teach them about language, something I love.
My Hobbies
Running, dogs, water sports, the beach, yoga, James Bond movies, going to the movies, spending time with friends and family at the lake.