SELFIE Team
CORE INSTRUCTORS
Dr. Adam Schilling
Adam holds a doctoral degree in higher education and social change, a master’s degree in marital and family therapy, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology. He began his professional career as an elementary school teacher in South Central Los Angeles, but after ten years in the classroom he transitioned away from teaching and into the field of mental and emotional health. He worked for an addiction treatment center for six years before starting his private practice.
Today Adam is a coach specializing in positive psychology, relationships, and addiction. He lives in Long Beach, California, and has just published his first book, Be Your Advocate (Balboa Press).
Alyssa Hartson
Alyssa graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a Bachelor of Science in Conservation and Environmental Science with a minor in Biology. She holds a Broadfield Science Teaching License in the State of Wisconsin.
In addition to classroom teaching, Alyssa spent over a year working in Antarctica and many summers as a guide on Matanuska Glacier in Alaska. She has also been a field instructor in Olympic National Forest, a snowmobile guide in Colorado, and a glacier guide in Norway and New Zealand.
Alyssa combined her love of science and the outdoors to create Wild Hearts Education Consulting, where she develops innovative outdoor programming and environmental education projects for grades 6-12.
Currently Alyssa lives in Montana, where she is a full-time teacher and co-owner of Uptown Yoga Studio in Butte.
Caitlin Hogan
Caitlin is the owner of Annex Training Center in Long Beach, California. She has trained at the Olympic level in weightlifting and ice hockey, earning six national titles in weightlifting and three silver medals at Pan American Weightlifting Championship. In addition to fitness coaching and nutrition consulting, she has served as the head ice hockey coach for the Anaheim Lady Ducks, the largest girls’ hockey program in the western United States.
Caitlin has an M.S. in Kinesiology from Texas Women’s University and a B.A. from Saint Cloud University in Minnesota. She lives in San Diego.
Dr. Laura Fokkena
Laura grew up in rural Iowa and earned a B.A. and M.A. from The University of Iowa before moving to Boston, where she spent over 20 years working in the field of education as a literacy consultant, ESL teacher, and education director in K-12 out-of-school programs. Along the way she earned a second master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Education from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Her dissertation work focused on the experiences of Muslim students in Germany. Laura’s writing has been published in Waking Up American: Coming of Age Biculturally (Seal Press), Mamaphonic: Balancing Motherhood and Other Creative Acts (Soft Skull Press), Expat: Women’s True Tales of Life Abroad (Seal Press), The Contemporary Reader (Pearson/Longman), Dialogues: An Argument Rhetoric and Reader (Pearson/Longman), as well as The Boston Globe, Radical Teacher, Home Education Magazine, The Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice, and other publications.
After homeschooling her own daughter, Laura founded Rise Out in 2012. She is also an adjunct professor in Lesley's Global Studies and Sociology departments. In 2021 she left Boston to return to her hometown in Iowa, and travels frequently to Germany where her daughter, now an adult, lives in Berlin.
Dr. Michael Mayo
The first in his family to go to college, Mike went to Harvard and studied English and American Literature. After a year as a journalist in Washington, D.C., he moved to Boston’s Bowdoin Street and began his teaching career at Nativity Prep in Roxbury, a free middle school for boys from families below the poverty line.
Six years later, he worked with his Uphams Corner neighbors to open a school to serve the local community. At the same time, he spent his summers in Oxford, getting an MA in English and developing his fascination with modernism, literacy, politics, and pedagogy.
After seven years as the school's principal and director, Mike moved to Edinburgh to get an MSc in Modernism and Literature, and then to Oxford to get his doctorate in literature. His book, James Joyce and the Jesuits (Cambridge University Press), was his way of putting all the educational pieces of his life together in one place.
He now teaches English in the U.K. at Oxford University, specializing in twentieth-century literature and literary theory. He looks forward to the day he comes back home to Uphams Corner.
Dr. Theresa (Terri) Senft
Terri began publishing on internet culture in 1990. She is a founding member of the Association of Internet Researchers, and the founder of the international Selfie Researcher Network. Terri's books include Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks (Peter Lang: 2008), the co-edited Routledge Handbook of Social Media (Taylor & Francis: 2015), and the co-authored History of the Internet: A chronology, 1843 to the present (ABC-Clio: 1999). Her most frequently cited works elaborate on her coinage of the term “microcelebrity,” and reflect on the ramifications of selfie culture worldwide.
Terri earned her B.A. in Political Science from SUNY-Albany and her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from NYU. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Social Media in the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. At Macquarie, Terri teaches classes on social media, media ethics, visual culture, and representational practices. Previously, she taught at New York University (US), University of East London (UK), and University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas (US).
Terri has a long history of community and industry engagement and has recently pivoted to service in the public health sector. She is currently consulting for the Infodemic Management Unit of the World Health Organization (WHO), helping them navigate questions around young people’s social media use worldwide. She has also been providing digital research guidance and youth-related training materials for the Vaccine Confidence Unit of the US Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC).
SUPPORT
Freddie DoSouto
Freddy is a first-generation Cape Verdean and was born and raised in Boston, MA. Freddy obtained his A.A. in Physical Science from Roxbury Community College and is a recent graduate of Lesley where he obtained a B.A. in Psychology.
In Freddy's free time, he has a passion for poetry and art. Freddy's creative art skills include stained art, such as glass and wood, as well as crafting/developing his first illustrative comic book. His future goal is to become a licensed art therapist.
Freddy joined Rise Out in September 2022, where he hosted weekly remote sessions for the Oxford Comma book clubs. He will continue in that capacity in 2023-2024, as well as being the Assistant Teacher for the SELFIE sex education class.
Janee Ronca
Janee was Rise Out's first student and joined its Board of Directors as a student representative at age 19. More than ten years later she has an A.A. degree in Education and is working as a full-time nanny and a homeschooling tutor. She attends UMass—Boston part-time as an Early Childhood Education major to continue her work with young children. She has worked as an AmeriCorps volunteer with Jumpstart teaching early literacy skills and has been a teaching assistant in several Rise Out classes, including Arts Monday and Big History. She also developed and teaches Rise Out’s Fanfiction class. For the 2023-24 school year, she’ll be planning and implementing Rise Out’s Nerd Herd Book Club.
GUEST SPEAKERS
Dr. Hanne Blank Boyd
Hanne is the author of Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Beacon Press), Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury), and The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts (Ten Speed Press). She is a former editor for Scarleteen, a sex education website for teenagers, and a historian who writes about feminism, sexuality, queer issues, body image, and body positivity.
Blake Boles
Blake is is the founder and director of Unschool Adventures and the author of Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?, The Art of Self-Directed Learning, Better Than College, and College Without High School. He also hosts the Off-Trail Learning Podcast. Blake’s passion is sharing his enthusiasm and experience with young adults who are blazing their own trails through life.
Margaret Samp
Margie is the Director of Post Graduate Planning at the Boston Day and Evening Academy, a school for students not served well by traditional schools. BDEA has a 100% success rate in getting students into college and securing the grants, loans, and financial aid they need to succeed. It also offers a robust path towards career training and internship opportunities. Margie will discuss post-high school planning and the college application process for students with unconventional educational backgrounds.
Dr. Sarah T. Roberts
Sarah is an associate professor at UCLA (Gender Studies, Information Studies, Labor Studies) and is the author of Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media (Yale University Press). Sarah will talk about the incredible work that goes on behind the scenes to ensure social media content adheres to legal and ethical standards.