Hi there. I’m Eric Mills. I work to change the world by teaching students how to view it with a more critical eye; I edit life. I also enjoy helping educators and school leaders reflect on their practice, clarify what matters, and build the conditions in which good work can continue.
My work also extends to how educators learn and how schools change. I’ve supervised humanities faculty, designed professional learning around colleagues’ immediate questions, and chaired a two-year effort to rethink how a high school organizes instructional time. Through accreditation reviews in the United States and Canada, I work with educators to examine programs and turn evidence into useful recommendations. Across those settings, I’m interested in the same question: how do we help people strengthen their judgment while preserving ownership of their work?
In the classroom, I teach a variety of high school and college courses that focus on history, storytelling, race, and gender. I’m currently at The Denver Waldorf School in Colorado. I formerly served on the board of directors for City Park Jazz where I initiated the student pre-show by advocating for the inclusion of student performers in the concert series. I also reported audience stories a la “Humans of NY” for various social media channels. I research the obsession with and lamentation over the decline of the Great House in transatlantic literature, specifically the Victorian novel as it crossed the Atlantic and pushed into Literary Modernity.
Back in the day, I founded the web presence for Great Education Colorado, Colorado PTA, and other Colorado education non-profits. I’ve been advocating for youth representation and quality education, in some form whether teaching or researching, for the last 20 years.
Many more moons ago I designed ESL curricula for Wuhan Textile University in China, and, together with my team, built the prototype for DexKnows.
If you see my Twitter profile, you will know that I read a lot and that I unapologetically vaccinate. And, yes, that Barack Obama follows me. It’s probably because I have impeccable taste in music.