I began working with children in 2013 when I volunteered for the annual Bug Day event at Randall Museum, bringing in live animals and educating visitors about them by using both pictures and examples when they had visited my station. I would do this every August prior to 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic forced the museum to temporarily cease operations. From 2017-2018, two summers before the museum’s closure, I also worked as a volunteer at the San Francisco Zoo as part of their Talk on The Wild Side (TOWS) program open to volunteers aged 14-18. While most of my job consisted of animal maintenance and husbandry, I was often able to interact with and educate visitors in front of exhibits with use of visual aids (or biofacts) provided by zoo staff.

As a fourth year University student, I began my studies in English after graduating Redwood High School with honors in June of 2019 and attending College of Marin that year. I transferred to UC Santa Barbara in 2022 with an Associates degree for Arts and in the same year was given the opportunity to volunteer at Goleta Valley Junior High, where I worked as a classroom teaching assistant and gave feedback to students on their academic essays as well as advice in reading and interpreting literature. My approach to teaching is to first see what students already know about their work and the expectations of the course instructor so that I can understand their strengths and weaknesses better, then work them through the process by asking questions and providing examples.