Having earned a BA in history and literature from UC Santa Cruz in 2011, he began his work in education co-teaching several sections of Revolutionary and Post-Civil-War U.S. History while tutoring writing, reading, and English as a second language at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, California.
Since 2016, he has tutored essay composition, grammar, and classic literature — from the plays of Shakespeare to the novels of Tolstoy — to middle and high schoolers aspiring to ivy-league schools at Improve Your English Tutoring Services in Sunnyvale, California.
He is the author of over a dozen long-form creative manuscripts.
His current research interrogates how conceptions of human and nonhuman personhood and of relationship to Self and Other arise under pressures of ecological, gender, authoritarian, and economical systems across Russian and American Cold-War literatures. He uses the plays of Shakespeare to discover surprising historical contexts for these inquiries into both American and Soviet texts.
In his teaching, David strives to foster critical thinking and to create inclusive learning environments in which students act as mindful cultivators of their own education, enabling them to discover their potentials to become agents of change in an evolving transnational world.
Learning happens when we are our most human selves, working in connection. Connection requires vulnerability. Vulnerability takes courage. Courage is forged through safety and inclusivity.