Academic Work

This assignment was completed for Teaching Young Adult Literature, an early course in my MA in English program. The task required selecting a young adult novel and designing a lesson plan aligned with specific pedagogical goals. As one of my first graduate-level assignments, this piece represents the starting point of my formal training in English studies and education. Looking back, it also highlights how much my analytical skills, instructional design, and academic writing have evolved since the beginning of the program.

This assignment expanded on the principles of the previous lesson plan but at a broader scale. I was tasked with designing a full instructional unit for an entry-level college composition course. The goal was to create a sequence that was both academically rigorous and personally engaging for students, anchored in credible, peer-reviewed research. This project allowed me to deepen my understanding of instructional design, refine my integration of scholarly sources, and further develop evidence-based teaching practices grounded in research and relevance.

Completed for Teaching Literacy for Action and Change, this assignment invited us to examine literacy through another person’s lived experience. I conducted an interview centered on the individual’s literacy sponsors and translated their story into a piece of creative nonfiction. This format allowed me to blend research-informed analysis with the emotional nuance of personal narrative. Through this project, I began to consider how literacy instruction can be shaped not only by pedagogical theory but also by the diverse histories and identities students carry into the classroom.