My research focuses on the teaching and learning of literary interpretation and writing in under-resourced urban high schools, with an emphasis on the links between in- and out-of-school interpretive practices. I am also interested in ways that AI and digital media (for example, natural language processing models like ChatGPT; visual representations of text like word clouds; and radio production) can be used as frameworks for teaching reading and writing to middle and high school students. Before pursuing an academic career, I taught secondary English at a Chicago public school for ten years. While there, I founded and ran a youth radio program that used digital audio production as a tool to help make writing and analysis relevant and real-world for students, and to build bridges between in- and out-of-school worlds.

My primary goal as an academic is to help shape the teaching and learning of secondary English teachers and contribute to research that will help students — especially those in urban and under-resourced schools — become independent readers and writers.