Sharjah, Sharjah Emirate, United Arab Emirates
The rhetorician in me is wary of a blurb meant to encompass my identity! Who, I wonder, will be reading and evaluating this paragraph? What is at stake? What aspects of myself should I highlight and which should remain in the shadows? As a teacher and a writer, these are the types of questions I advocate should be asked in a communicative exchange. I also promote mindful vulnerability and a bit of risk taking—it’s how we connect as humans. Therefore, who am I? I am a teacher of writing, group facilitation, critical thinking, medical humanities, professional communication, grief support, and ways of using story to understand our lives. I am a student of writing, teaching, communication, Spanish, spirituality, music, carpentry and, always, human interaction. I am a parent. A musician. A martial artist. A cyclist. A sound healer. An author. A world traveler. A husband. A son. A brother. And a friend. I am curious. And, at times anxious. I work hard. And, I enjoy leisure. I am ambitious. Very. But not willing to sacrifice family for career. As I write this later statement, I wonder if it is the wrong thing to include on LinkedIn. Probably, but this is who I am. And, perhaps, we should all be more up front about who we are when navigating the professional world. It might ensure we find the right place to apply our talents.
In January of 2021, I became the Healing Arts Director for The Center Foundation, an emerging non-profit serving the Reno-Tahoe region providing the community with a broad range of evidence-based offerings including corporate wellness programs, continuing education for health-care providers and educators, and community-based classes and workshops. Specifically, my duties include the development and facilitation of a broad range of writing curriculum addressing cancer survivorship, addiction and recovery, grief, trauma, creative nonfiction, ecological writing, corporate wellness, and continuing education for health-care providers of all types. Most recently, I have been teaching continuing education workshops for mental health providers, facilitating a supporting grief workshop, and teaching online reflective writing classes. In the Spring, I will be teaching ESL community classes in addition to the work outlined above.
During my final three years of doctoral work in Rhetoric and Composition (specializing in narrative medicine), the University of Nevada, School of Medicine hired me to develop and facilitate a reflective writing program. Specifically, I facilitated an online reflective writing curriculum for first year students with the goal of providing a compositional space in which they could explore psychosocial issues in medicine. Toward this end, I led a responder team that tailored writing prompts for student reflections based upon time periods involving potential stressors, ethical dilemmas, and significant transitions. For second-year students, I facilitated an “Illness Narrative Project” designed to: 1) situate students in “patients’ shoes” through the practice of vulnerability; 2) develop trust in teammates; and 3) move against the dualistic notion of the patient as a body and the physician as a disembodied mind. In accordance, students wrote and shared illness narratives which, in this context, are defined as accounts of illness/injury experienced directly by the student or someone with whom they had a personal relationship. For third-year students, I designed and facilitated “Parallel Charting Groups,” which provided students in the clinical phase of training a space to employ writing for the purpose of: 1) releasing challenging emotions; 2) processing uncertainty in medicine; and 3) bearing witness to the experiences of patients and themselves. With these goals in mind, students regularly journaled on the types of psychosocial thoughts and feelings arising during patient interaction that would be inappropriate to note in medical charts and then periodically met to discuss their writing. I was also engaged in leading faculty trainings regarding responding to student writing, as well as presenting my research at conferences within both medical humanities and English studies.
During my first three years of doctoral work, I taught multiple composition courses including English 101, English 102, English 104, and English 100i (an intensive introductory writing course for students in need of additional assistance). In addition, I taught discussion sections for Core Humanities 202: The Modern World. Finally, I served as the graduate coordinator for English 102, which involved curricular revision and providing assistance to new teachers. My student evaluations speak to the quality of work I was providing.
I had the incredible privilege and opportunity to teach abroad for close to four-years at the American University of Sharjah located just outside of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. During my time there, I worked with a diverse population of students originating from all over the world. Specifically, I taught a variety of writing courses ranging from introductory writing to writing for Engineers, courses which focused on the types of skills students needed to learn while doing so by building on the knowledge and experiences they brought with them into the classroom. I also served on several curriculum committees and was part of the creation of a text book designed specifically for our program.