readings, performances, other appearances

I've been teaching in classrooms as well as conducting workshops and circles on storytelling, poetry, journaling, and using language to dream and remember as a practice of liberation for over eight years.

 

Most recently I was Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing, Journalism, and Critical Theory at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Working with a predominantly Indigenous student body, I guided small classes through the process of coming to know their own craft, voices, and ways of thinking and knowing; developing original stories with an approach to reporting that challenges Western colonialist modes; and building their portfolios as they prepare for careers as artists. In my final semester at IAIA, my students produced a professional-level exhibition to showcase their work — textiles and fashion, poetry zines, illustration, interactive paper sculpture, graphic narrative, and more, all inspired by class texts — at a downtown Santa Fe gallery. I am also a consultant at the Columbia School of Social Work Writing Center, where I meet in individual sessions with master's and PhD candidates to offer tools and insights to support their writing.

 

Prior to these roles, I worked in New York City public schools as an arts educator, co-teaching classes of middle and high school students, almost all of them black or brown, who were exploring the power of their personal truths in a time of radical change. And for three summers I was an instructor at the School of the New York Times; there I taught high school students from across the globe in a range of pre-college courses: on-the-ground writing about cities and immigrant communities, personal narrative, culture essays, and more.

 

Independently I facilitate spaces where participants interrogate their histories and too often repressed subjectivities toward creating work that reflects an alternate reality, or one emerging from the margins or ruptures of our collective epistemics. I have shared these skills at conferences and community programs hosted by The New School, Barnard, Pratt, Arts & Democracy, and BRIC among others.

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I aim for all of my efforts as an educator to be student-led and am engaged in an ongoing process of developing a praxis around dismantling teacher-leaner power structures, implementing anti-racist pedagogy, and decolonizing education systems broadly.  

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If you would like to book me to lead a workshop, please fill out the form on my contact page!