I am originally from the Bertie County area, but currently reside in Greenville, North Carolina. I obtained my bachelor’s degree in English Education from Elizabeth City State University, and am in my final semester of East Carolina University’s English MA program. My  scholarly interests blend the study of rhetoric and communication, combining theory from across the humanities and social sciences to explore how meaning is communally made, shared, and attributed value. As a teacher, I believe that learning occurs socially through conversation and expression – that each perspective included in a given conversation only gives us more possibilities to consider. I am an advocate of collaborative projects, multimodal composition, and the academic potential of digital technologies. I place great value in the notion of relevancy, and work to engage with the bases of knowledge that students bring with them into the classroom so as to help them form personalized connections to new material.