About
My path to social studies
Teacher, teacher educator, researcher, and curriculum designer. I grew up in St. Louis and have spent my career helping children and educators think critically, creatively, and courageously about the world.
An early radioactive spider bite
When I was in third grade, my teacher asked each student in the class to pick a number from a hat. The students who picked 1s received soda and chips; the 2s got pretzels and water; the 3s got nothing. It was a lesson about global poverty.
I still remember the devastation I felt when I picked a 3, and the jealousy that followed as I sat on the floor with many of my classmates, empty-handed, watching two students eat Doritos and drink Orange Crush. But I also felt surprised and sad about what I was learning. It began to change the way I looked at the world and my place in it.
Social studies caught my attention, and my emotions, early on, and it never let go.
Becoming a teacher
I grew up in the University City area of St. Louis and attended Our Lady of Lourdes, St. Joseph’s Academy, and Washington University in St. Louis. I became serious about a career in elementary education after taking a critical literacy course at WashU with Dr. Rebecca Rogers, and became involved in an organization she founded, now called Educators for Social Justice (ESJ).
Through my work with ESJ, I began to see more clearly how profoundly elementary education shapes children’s understandings of themselves, others, and the world, often for the rest of their lives. I also discovered that I love collaborating with elementary educators to think critically, creatively, and courageously about social studies curriculum.
Classroom teaching
In 2005, I took a position as a 4th-grade teacher in Guadalajara, Mexico, my grandmother’s hometown.
In 2007, I moved to Chicago for a master’s degree in Instructional Leadership and Elementary Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where I also earned certifications in bilingual education and ESL.
In 2009, I returned to St. Louis to teach 4th grade in the Ritenour School District, where I was named Diamond Circle Teacher of the Year and recognized as a model teacher for culturally and linguistically responsive teaching.
In 2012, I took a position teaching 6th grade in the Maplewood Richmond Heights School District, where creative, equity-oriented curricular approaches were openly embraced and cultivated.
In 2014, I moved back to Chicago, where I taught 2nd grade at Coonley Elementary and later served as a literacy and social studies interventionist. See my teaching portfolio.
Reading Julius Lester’s Let’s Talk About Race aloud in my classroom.
Doctoral work
Across my 12 years as an elementary teacher, I became increasingly frustrated by how consistently social studies was marginalized and dismissed. It was routinely denied instructional time, professional development, coherent curriculum, and sustained care across schools, districts, and cities. Realizing that this is a nationwide, systemic problem demanding serious attention led me to pursue a doctorate in Learning, Teaching and Curriculum, with an emphasis in social studies education, at the University of Missouri–Columbia.
During my doctoral studies, I served as a lead Elementary Social Studies Methods instructor. I redesigned the course so that its structure, resources, and assignments were coherent, practical, and equity-oriented, and I worked closely with preservice teachers to process their fears about teaching social studies and strengthen their confidence. In 2022, I was named the University of Missouri campus winner of the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools Excellence in Teaching Award.
At the University of Missouri’s Francis Quadrangle.
Receiving the Excellence in Teaching Award, 2021–2022.
National leadership
From 2018 to 2020, I served in the leadership of the Graduate Forum of the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA) of the National Council for the Social Studies, first as Vice Chair and then as Chair. I worked with scholars across the field to make sure emerging social studies researchers and teacher educators were meaningfully mentored and supported.
Alongside my university teaching and service, I published and presented on a variety of social studies topics in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and conferences. One article about teaching controversial issues received particular attention and was featured on the Visions of Education podcast.
Visions of Education, Episode 100 (2019).
Today
The P.O.W.E.R. Framework and OPALIS
My research and professional work culminated in the P.O.W.E.R. Framework, a curriculum design framework created in response to teachers’ need for a structure that could sustain critical commitments without sacrificing clarity or coherence. I now work full-time as an elementary social studies curriculum designer and professional development facilitator through OPALIS Curriculum House, where P.O.W.E.R. is the conceptual and structural heart of the curriculum I am building.