Service
I am regularly involved in education and art projects in Toronto. For the city of Toronto, I recently co-designed a Scavenger Hunt, which entailed inventing prompts and provocations for participants (of all ages and abilities) as guided invitations to be activated as they wandered the city engaging with others and the city itself at the 140 sites during the annual Doors Open Toronto event (May 2023). I co-designed and implemented high school Music, English, and History curriculum for Heritage Toronto’s Sounds like Toronto digital exhibit. I have also worked with Scarborough Arts as a creative writing workshop facilitator with teens and seniors.
I actively engage in service within my department, my institution, the wider profession, and in my local community of Tkaronto (Toronto). These experiences in various spaces continue to inspire my academic and personal life and speak to my commitment to meaningful ongoing service.
Service at the University of Toronto
Since starting my PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, I have served in groups, on committees, and in communities across the institution. Since 2018, I have been an advisory board member and co-ordinator at the Toronto Writing Project at the Centre for Urban Schooling at OISE, where I also co-run a monthly virtual creative writing workshop for educators across North America. For the academic year 2021 - 2022, I was a graduate student representative on the University of Toronto Libraries Student Advisory Committee. Within the Department of Curriculum, Learning, and Teaching, I co-founded and continue to organize events and initiatives for the Arts in Education Graduate Student Group at OISE. I am currently (2023 - 2024) a member of the Community Engaged Learning research initiative at the Centre for Community Partnerships at the University of Toronto.
Service to the Profession
Through membership in professional organizations, I actively engage in service. I have served as committee liaison and organizer of the Qualitative Research SIG Graduate Student Committee with the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for over three years. I am on the Writers Council with the National Writing Project (NWP), where I connect with teachers and students and contribute to programming and web content. I am a fellow at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University’s Washington College of Law, where I develop case studies and exemplars of professional development materials for creating better Open Educational Resources (OERs) and navigating best practices in Fair Use/ Fair Dealing in English Langauge Arts. This work is done alongside a diverse, dedicated group of K-12 educators and librarians, education scholars, and instructional designers across the United States.