Background

Over the years I have taught algebra, English, creative writing, and French. While I no longer teach full time, I teach at least twice a month in the summer and at least twice a week throughout the school year. I currently teach creative writing in high schools in Snohomish, Skagit, and King Counties through Writers in the Schools, Poets in Schools, and Spark! Creativity. I also teach adults who are incarcerated at the King County Correctional Facility and adults in transitional housing in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.

I am a former ESL/ELL tutor and earned a certification in the Laubach Literary method.

I have also taught workshops and have lectured at places like the Seattle Art Museum and Hugo House. I taught Ethics & Moral Philosophy at the University of Washington's Experimental College before the College closed. I have also spoken on multiple panels over the last decade and am hoping to lead a panel at the AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) Conference in 2026.

In graduate school, I partnered with an instructor to launch a blog called Lolly's Classroom where people, mostly other teachers, wrote about books for kids and young adults. This site was published through the Horn Book, the oldest organization dedicated to reviewing children's literature.

In 2013, received my master's degree in education with a focus on literacy and languages from Harvard, where I later returned to be a Teaching Fellow. I am also a 2025 graduate of the Washington State Teaching Artist Training (TAT) lab, a program for teachers of multiple artistic disciplines (music, dance, literary, visual, etc.) who want to deepen our planning and pedagogy to improve outcomes for students in arts education.

My approach

I strive to help students to find their own voice as writers; I like them to be able to identify the rules but not be confined by them. I also try to find that "in" with each learner, that point of connection, that piece or subject or style that speaks to them.

I value breadth as well as depth of knowledge. To that end, I do not always have a particular focus for the writing program with which I am involved, as I am aiming to do something quite new and different each time.

I would like students to realize that anyone can engage with writing. I acknowledge the subjectivity of writing (especially poetry) as an art form and concede that not every piece we encounter in our lives will resonate with us, and may not even make sense to us. However, I believe that there is a piece of writing out there for everyone. I want to talk to students about different techniques, approaches, and forms and hear what they think works and what doesn't—and why. I want them to then glean from those discussions and examples to help them craft their own writing and (for students who feel comfortable) to share some of their work aloud and/or through the publishing of it.

I feel that my residencies and classes are successful if students learned some new things about writing, if they have a greater appreciation for genre (even if some of them say they don't "get" it), and if they have some fun along the way.