Teaching

Current adjunct faculty at Oregon Coast Community College. Former adjunct faculty at Chicago City College, Portland Community College and Portland State University. Courses I’ve taught include:

Writing 115: Intro to Expository Writing. I often open with an essay asking: What is your relationship to food? Students are encouraged to cite family members, restaurant staff, bloggers, etc. I use textbook the They Say/I Say.

Writing 121: Composition. I aim to teach thinking critically, working with outside sources, and fixing bad grammar habits. I use the textbook Everything’s an Argument. I contributed to and teach this Portland Community College library site on fake news. 

Writing 222: Research. Database and life navigation. I opened with Annie Dillard’s chapter “Seeing” from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It seemed good to think of research as a ruthless examination of our immediate surroundings.

Writing 323: Critical Inquiry. I had students investigate the concept of wilderness. I started with Roderick Nash’s Wilderness and the American Mind, added American Wilderness: A New History  and over time included essays like Jourdan Imani Keith’s “Desegregating Wilderness” and films like Neil Diamond’s Reel Injun. The course was eventually featured in the Association of the Study of Literature and the Environment.

Writing 333: Advanced Composition. I taught Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem and John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead to explain essay writing as narrative exploration.

Writing Contest: 2017-18. In 2017 I became a faculty fellow with the Institute for Sustainable Solutions for my work blending environmental science and humanities education. I organized and hosted a writing contest on climate change solutions called Thinking Our Way Forward.