Current Students

Having lived in Texas most of her life, Michele Benage picked up and moved to New York City in 2010 to serve as an AmeriCorps member at City Year New York. While serving the South Bronx community, she grew passionate about fulfilling an impactful career in public education. After City Year, she graduated from Texas State University with a B.A. in English. For the last five years, she has taught nearly all grade levels of English at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas, and currently teaches an incredible group of seniors there. She draws most of her inspiration for her work in her classroom from leading educators of the National Writing Project and the National Council of Teachers of English.

When she’s not teaching during the school year, Michele likes to experience live music, read just about any fiction she can get her hands on, and take her dog, Clarence, out for hikes in the beautiful Texas Hill Country. During the summer, she’s taking classes with her InSTEP cohort, dreaming up new possibilities for the field of English Education with perhaps too much fervor, getting lost in rabbit holes typically triggered by the ideas of James Moffett, and exploring the bewitching city of New York.

Sapna Chemplavil has spent the past six years working in the education sector. She served two years as an Americorps member with the education nonprofit City Year San Jose / Silicon Valley, working with 6th-8th graders her first year and leading the site’s leadership development and post-service programming for Americorps members in her second year. Sapna then worked with Galileo Innovation Camps teaching 3rd-8th grade science. From there, she joined the workforce development nonprofit Year Up Bay Area, working on training and programming. She finally made the jump to traditional classroom teaching by completing a teacher residency year in southeast Washington, DC. There, she earned initial certification in both Secondary English Education and Special Education. She has spent the past two years teaching 9th grade English in east Oakland, CA. Sapna earned her BA in English and psychology from Dartmouth College and has completed graduate coursework in education through Lesley University. This year she is an Abby M. O’Neill fellow. In her spare time, Sapna enjoys dancing, indoor bouldering, and (of course!) reading and writing. She is interested in creating equitable spaces that empower students to find their voices and engage with the world in socially and politically productive ways.

Jillian Hand grew up on Long Island and graduated from University at Buffalo in 2018 with a bachelor's degree in English and a dual minor in both Education and Counseling. While at UB she worked at the writing center as a writing consultant and studied British Literature in London for a summer. She's excited to continue her education at Teachers College and hopes to grow as a both an educator and a person. When she's not writing or reading, she's probably watching One Tree Hill, hiking, or at a country concert.

Before arriving to Teachers College, Kyle graduated from Washington College in 2017 with a major in English and minor in Secondary Education. Since 2012, Kyle has interned and taught in special education, elementary, middle, and high school environments. Specifically, Kyle has an extensive background in teaching theater, which he has done for many summers. Kyle taught sophomore English at The Gunston School in Maryland for a year, became TEFL certified, and then decided to make the move to NYC to pursue a master's program in English Education. As a Student Ambassador of Teachers College, Kyle enjoys meeting new people and being surrounded by like-minded individuals. His interests in education include differentiation for all learners and sparking student interest in plays and Shakespeare.

High school teacher at a public school in New Jersey for 20 years. Decided it's never too late to move to the city you love and get a graduate degree in the university you always wanted to attend.

Lora is from Great Neck, Long Island, and graduated from CUNY Brooklyn College / Macaulay Honors College in 2018 with a B.A. in Linguistics & English, and a minor in Sociology. She completed her undergraduate senior thesis on family relationships in Dickens and her senior capstone project on wh-movement in Croatian. She has worked with first & second graders and college underclassmen, and is currently student teaching as part of pursuing an M.A. in Teaching of English with initial certification. She enjoys reading poetry on the LIRR and taking long walks through parks.

Hello! My name is Brie Rosa. In this photo I’m in an art gallery in South Korea, where I taught for 4 years in a “hagwon,” or a private English academy. Though I taught Pre-K through 8th grade, I’m now working towards my Masters in Adolescent English Education so that I can become a high school English teacher here in NYC, where I was born and raised. This is a dream I’ve had on my back burner since my AP Lit teacher changed my relationship with literature forever, and TC is helping me to achieve it! Annyeong!

Sahar Soleimany graduated from Queens College, City University of New York with a B.A. in English Education 7-12 in 2018. As the eldest daughter of Middle Eastern immigrants, her family history and ethnic upbringing has informed her disciplinary interests in diasporic narratives, critical literacy, and culturally relevant pedagogies. While an undergraduate student, she developed an ethnographic research study on Cyphers for Justice, a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) after-school program within the Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME) at Teachers College, Columbia University, which apprentices inner-city high school youth as critical researchers of social and educational injustices plaguing their communities. Her research evaluated the potential benefits of using YPAR as an alternative to traditional classroom pedagogy by examining youth-to-youth and youth-to-adult relations within the program, as well as the role YPAR plays in building critical consciousness and cultural competency in students. As an M.A. student in the English Education program at Teachers College, Sahar hopes to continue her commitment to multicultural education by exploring the effects of integrating postcolonial and transnational literature in classrooms on student identity and positionality.

I am from Bismarck, North Dakota, where I grew up and lived all my life up until this point. Just prior to this, I had been a high-school English teacher there at St. Mary's Central High School where I taught AP English to juniors and seniors, in addition to being the drama director, yearbook advisor, and newspaper advisor. I loved my experience as a teacher there immensely, but after seven years of doing that, I was ready to try something new and seek my MA here at TC in New York City! Despite being from a smaller community in one of the more rural regions of the country, I still feel comfortable in the big city thanks to my past traveling experiences, which include traveling through Europe, a solo road trip down the West Coast, and a month-long stay in D.C. studying Shakespeare at the Folger Library. At the same time, I also spend a lot of time outdoors, doing things like camping with family in the mountains of Montana, or hiking through the Badlands of ND. My hobbies outside of teaching include playing piano and guitar, reading (any genre), drawing, video games, reality TV, and volleyball.

Thagrith Taki Wachiredetsakul earned his BA with an emphasis on Cultural studies and Critical Theories from Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. With his endeavor in English and Comparative Literature, Taki has written many articles with an intention to use critical theories as a frame to dig deeper into literary works from multiple linguistic and cultural backgrounds. While in his undergraduate program, Taki took several modern language classes, for instance, Korean, Spanish (as his minor, with an emphasis on Latin American Literature), Italian, and French (his favorite molders language as he received Le Bac from LLG). Here at Columbia University, he goes to classes with an intention to make ELA and English Literature accessible for ESL and EFL students. Taki worked as a research assistant at the Department of English Studies, The University of Tokyo to come up with a general and practical method to integrate English Literature and Literary Studies in EFL classroom.

This upcoming year Taki and his dad will be founding a specific language school where the teaching of language and literature are attempted to be conducted under the very same EFL course. This is very challenging for him since this particular type of private school is scarce in the East and South East Asian countries. Language is not merely a tool for communication for, but also a linguistic and cultural platform where students can understand themselves better and learn more about the other’s ways of thinking.

Eve Becker has taught middle school English since 2001. She came to teaching after a first career as a writer and editor in both print and digital publishing. She is the author of over thirty published novels for young readers, and numerous stories and essays for adults. In 2012, she was awarded a Pushcart Prize for her personal essay, "Final Concert." She is the founder and director of Leaf and Pen, an organization that runs writing retreats and workshops for educators.

Eve's professional interests include building writer identity in both students and teachers, adolescent literacy, equity through literature and teacher education. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1980. She is a native New Yorker, parent, traveler and dreamer.

It is through active learning that is both personal and shared, that we become empathetic, responsible, and connected, that we find pleasure in intellectual challenge, and that we become vital members of our world.