Teaching
Over the last 15 years, Catherine has worked as classroom teacher, museum guide, and outdoor educator. In all of these contexts, she strives to make learning active, collaborative, challenging, and connected to the real lives of learners. She bases her work in students’ enthusiasm and curiosity, and builds environments based in mutual understanding and a shared delight in learning.
Catherine received her Massachusetts Teaching Certification from the New Teachers Collaborative. For 8 years, she taught Humanities at Meridian Academy, a small project-based school where students undertake in-depth and complex investigations in all areas of their learning. In addition to teaching Humanities, she also directed Meridian's theater program, led their 11th grade research seminar, and co-founded their peer mentoring program.
She now works as an Educator with Boxerwood Nature Center & Woodland Garden, where she leads field trips, after-school programs, and summer camps that encourage environmental stewardship. She is also a Teacher Leader with Facing History & Ourselves and a Writing Consultant at Washington & Lee University.
Humanities
Throughout Catherine’s time leading project-based Humanities classes, her students have produced podcasts, designed museum exhibits, generated multimedia artwork, performed their own original plays, and learned a variety of writing styles including the analytical essay, the research paper, the personal narrative, and poetry.
Awards & Honors
National Endowment for the Humanities Institute
Catherine was selected to participate in a weeklong summer professional development institute for teachers, titled “Social Movements and Reform in Industrializing America: The Lowell Experience Institute.”
Margot Stern Strom Innovation Grant
Catherine created and co-founded The Correspondence Project, which fosters students’ civic engagement across political divides through writing monthly letters. She collaborated closely with her colleague Cherese Smith in Ozark, Arkansas – and experts at Essential Partners, who specialize in dialogue across difference – to develop a curriculum that supports connection, reflection, and honest dialogue between students from diverse political backgrounds.
Theater & Playwriting
Catherine love making plays with young people. She strives to create rehearsal rooms where – regardless of their experience level – students can learn the delights and challenges of collaboration and harness the singular joy of theater.
She began directing in college and has since directed theater in a wide variety of settings and styles. She has also been thrilled to serve as a mentor for high school directors working on their first productions.
Selected Productions
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
Bernhardt/Hamlet by Theresa Rebeck
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Men On Boats by Jaclyn Backhaus
Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer
The Actor’s Nightmare by Christopher Durang
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
In addition to directing, Catherine has also taught playwriting classes. At the high school level, each course culminated in the submission of 10-minute plays to the Massachusetts Young Playwrights' Project, a four-day festival in which student plays are given readings by professional directors and actors.
Beyond the Classroom
In addition to traditional school settings, Catherine has worked with students in several contexts outside of the classroom. When students are welcomed into a new space and invited to engage with the world in ways they haven’t before, they often tap into new forms of inquiry, creativity, and collaboration.
Boxerwood Nature Center & Woodland Garden
Lexington, Virginia
As an educator with Boxerwood, Catherine leads field trips, after-school programs, and summer camps that educate students about sustainability, create authentic and service-based learning experiences, and encourage environmental stewardship.
The Museum of the Moving Image
Queens, New York
From 2010-2012, Catherine led educational tours at MoMI through exhibits on film history, television, video games, editing, effects, and cinema culture. She also taught workshops in stop-motion animation, video game design, political ads, shadow puppetry, and optical illusions.
The Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program
University of California at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center
Catherine is currently enrolled in MMTCP – based out of the University of California at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center – where she is learning skills to teach mindfulness in a variety of contexts to address issues including anxiety, depression, pain, and stress.