COA Alumni

16

Corvallis, Oregon

Graduate teaching assistant at Oregon State University

I’m currently a graduate teaching assistant at Oregon State University, where I’m working toward an MFA in Poetry. I’m also involved with the Mount Desert Island Historical Society, where I worked in several capacities after graduating from COA. Both jobs rely a lot on teaching and collaborative skills I developed through COA’S educational studies program, as a tutor in the Writing Center, and as an editor for Bateau literary magazine. As part of my graduate fellowship, I teach freshman composition and am looking forward to teaching poetry next year. I’ll also be copyediting the Historical Society’s annual magazine, Chebacco, and
returning to the island to work for them this summer. What I love about both jobs is that I can continue to conduct research, develop creative projects, and support others in finding and pursuing their interests.

There’s always a project! I’m working on installing a letterpress at Oregon State, with more printing projects on the horizon. I live right by my neighborhood’s park and bird sanctuary,
and so I’ve been going for walks and birdwatching every day before I head to campus. My housemate is a beneficial insect researcher and I’m learning a lot just from living with her, not only about predacious ground beetles but also how to identify and prepare mushrooms, can and preserve tuna, and all sorts of other useful skills.

My internship was a student teaching practicum at Conners Emerson School in Bar Harbor. I worked closely with a mentor teacher and a supervisor from COA to teach my own English Language Arts project on oral history podcasts. This internship also fulfilled the requirement to receive my teaching certification in the State of Maine. Not only did I love teaching seventh grade and working with the faculty at the school, but it was a perfect way to shift into a new role toward the end of my studies at COA. I returned to Conners Emerson as a long-term substitute in the spring, and then in the following fall, was hired as a support teacher at the Community School of MDI, founded by COA alumna Jasmine Smith.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be part of a neighborhood, in close physical
relationships to people and place. I think that belonging to a neighborhood is itself a form
of human ecology, as is paying attention to the elements and relationships that constitute
one’s surroundings. I love taking walks and talking to people out on the street where I live,
and I’ve learned a lot about the other species that reside here: migrating birds in Willamette
Park, predacious ground beetles in the gardens, and of course, all of the dogs and their human
companions. I see any project or reflective action that engages different parts of a community
as especially human ecological.

With every year since my graduation, I can see more and more direct ties from the work I’m
doing now to the skills that I developed and connections I made at COA. The small size of
COA was a huge reason for this; it’s a very inventive and positive learning environment. I gained
a lot from our emphasis on collective responsibility - at COA it’s very much the fiber of the
community. Finally, I owe so much to the fantastic faculty with whom I had the opportunity to
work closely with across disciplines, and who always challenged and encouraged me. Every day,
I use teaching methods that I learned at COA through teaching assistantships with Bonnie Tai
or through the Writing Center and the educational studies program.