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Sara's career as a teaching artist began in 2010 with a short story workshop for twelve-year-old girls at the Center for Working Children in Quito, Ecuador. By the end of the semester, the short stories had become a script, and the script had become a ninety-minute play both directed and performed by her students. Sara's responsibilities in the final weeks of preparation included securing a working boom box, inviting the hundreds of members of the school community, introducing the show, and then staying out of the way.

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This, to Sara, is the essence of the work of a teaching artist. It is a hopscotch game of energy and empty space, instruction and silence.

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Sara is a four-time visiting writer at Authoring Action, a youth spoken word organization in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She is the founder and former coach of two slam poetry teams in Philadelphia---one out of YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School, a program for former high school drop-outs, and one out of ArtWell, an arts-based nonprofit dedicated to young people from underserved communities. She co-founded and directed the Poeticians, a Hip-Hop and spoken word collective based in Point Breeze, Philadelphia, and has taught creative writing workshops in public schools, after-school programs, community centers, homeschooling workshops, summer camps and elsewhere. She has developed extensive curriculum content for ages 13-18, and also has multiple years of experience working with middle schoolers as well as adults.

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Sara holds an M.F.A. in Fiction from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and is currently a lecturer in their English department. 

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