Humanities

I received my bachelor’s degree in Japanese at Stanford and completed my master’s degree in Japanese Studies from the University of Michigan. I also received a Klingenstein Summer Fellowship to study at Teachers College at Columbia University.

For me, high school was great experience. It was in high school that I developed a love of the humanities that I still feel, and which still drives me, to this day. My favorite subjects were history, German, and English. One of my favorite experiences was a one-month exchange program with a school in Hamburg, an opportunity that established my life-long love of travel and cultural studies. As for teachers, my favorites, the ones who really left a lasting mark, were always the ones who asked a lot of me – I loved being challenged, because that was when I knew I was getting something I did not have before, and it gave me confidence. My own high-school years definitely inform my work as a teacher today, in a couple of crucial ways. For one thing, I believe it is really important that I ask my students to stretch and grow, sometimes beyond what feels comfortable to them in the moment. And I believe very strongly that high school can be a wonderful, hugely important, and very enriching time of life. Those are two of the core beliefs that guide my approach to students today.

As a teacher, I am also working on developing new ways of leading students to new skills and knowledge through lessons, assignments and activities that depend less on my factual expertise and energy and more on their own thinking, interest and investigation. In other words, the less I “tell them” what’s what, and the more they learn by thinking and doing on their own, the better.

My life outside school has been dominated for the last year by parenthood. My first child, Sylvie, is now fourteen months old, and she is the greatest single joy I have ever known. I can hardly wait to share with her more and more of the things that I love in life: the outdoors, books, travel, music, languages, sports, games... But if she doesn’t show a particular interest in those things, I will be just as eager to help her identify her own passions in life.

Humanities core classes and Humanities elective classes