On leave from New York City Schools where I had been teaching high school English for the past 7 years, I served as a 2009-10 Washington Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education. In the first part of my fellowship, I worked in the Office of the Assistant Secretary (OAS) for Elementary and Secondary Education, Dr. Thelma Melendez where I specialized in communications for the Assistant Secretary. I represented OAS on the Secondary Schools Work Group and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Literacy Workgroup. I was also able to travel and speak in break-out sessions at American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) conferences on struggling schools. On behalf of Assistant Secretary Melendez, I presented the Department’s plan for ESEA reauthorization to National Association of Secondary School Principals at their national conference in Phoenix, Arizona. For the last third of my Fellowship, I rotated to work with Brad Jupp on teacher outreach projects. This included planning and coordinating teacher-leader study groups on the ESEA blueprint and supporting the work of the TEACH campaign, the Department’s teacher recruitment initiative.

Eleven years ago my high school was threatened to be shut down by the state; this year the school was ranked #75 in the country by US News and World Report. I am a Title I Nationally Board Certified Teacher, serve as a member of the Teacher Advisory Panel for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Measure of Teacher Effectiveness Project and was a 2009 finalist for the New York City Teaching Fellows Award for Classroom Excellence. My interests include adolescent literacy, college preparedness, and urban secondary school leadership. I have also worked in college admissions, university development, and I ran an after-school learning program that served children from ages 4-14.