Samantha Emily Evans

My name is Samantha Evans (aka Sammy) and I am excited to run to represent the Education-At-Large committee. I grew up in the Valley and my dream neighborhood was always Los Feliz! At 31 years old, I'm living my teen dream, and it's just as magical as I hoped it would be. I would love to serve this community by representing the education committee, something I care deeply about and am involved in.

I have been teaching high school English at LAUSD for the last four years (Taft High and the North Hollywood High Zoo Magnet -across from the zoo! I am incredibly passionate about project-based learning and having students do work that is meaningful to the community, to show students they can have a positive impact right now. I also want to prepare them for the challenges of the 21st century requiring many kinds of literacy - climate, financial, digital and emotional literacy to name a few. To develop more expertise in this area, I completed a Masters in Secondary English Language Arts teaching at Cal State Northridge and serve as the CSUN Writing Project Environmental Justice representative.

Before that I studied English and History at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and then went to work at SAGE Publications in marketing where I learned about the research to action gap, and decided I wanted to do something about that! I also learned a lot about meetings, agendas, and other tidbits to survive in an international corporation.

As the Education representative, I would love to continue to support administrators and school staff, helping them to set up project-based learning activities with our local businesses, nonprofits, and Griffith Park; supporting more literacy events; and helping make the students that are being educated here feel like our kids in our neighborhood!