Arts Integration

• Trained in arts integration strategies to create meaningful connections between the arts and core curriculum, enhancing student engagement, critical thinking, and deeper understanding.
  
  

• Studied with Focus 5 educators Sean Layne (Acting Right: Drama as a Classroom Management Strategy) and Melanie Rick (Arts Integration Specialist), learning techniques to integrate drama, visual arts, and performance into academic learning.
  
  

• Applied methods from Making Thinking Visible to foster visible thinking routines, encouraging reflection, collaboration, and creativity in the classroom.
  
  

• Designed and implemented arts-integrated curricula that support culturally responsive teaching, collaborative learning, and student empowerment, creating a more inclusive and dynamic educational environment.

Ethnic Studies 

• Participated in advanced Ethnic Studies training under Dr. Curtis Acosta, focusing on Aztec (Mexica) epistemology and pedagogy.

• Studied frameworks such as Smoke and Mirrors (the search for truth beyond illusions), Beautiful Knowledge (Toltecayotl — cultivating wisdom, artistry, and moral character), Shedding Layers (transformation through self-reflection and discomfort), and the use of the Obsidian Mirror (honest self-examination and personal accountability).

• Applied these Indigenous philosophies as a way of reimagining teaching and learning as a transformational, relational, and healing process rather than traditional, colonial models of education.

• Additionally, engaged in relearning U.S. history through Indigenous perspectives, working closely with teachings rooted in the histories of the Wiyot, Karuk, and Yurok peoples of Humboldt County.
  
  Additional Trainings:
  Equity and Social Justice Trainings: HCOE Equity Series, Social Justice and Literature
  Mathematics Education: HELMT (Humboldt Education Leadership Math Team)Training, Jo Boaler Workshop, CMC Far North Conference
  Leadership Development: CTA Presidents Conference, Better Together Teachers Summit