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 teaching and leadership can continue.
That interest 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 partner with educators to examine programs and turn evidence into useful recommendations. Across those settings, I keep returning to the same question: how do we help people strengthen their judgment while preserving ownership of their work?
I hold a PhD in Literary Studies from the University of Denver, where my dissertation traced the fascination with and lamentation over the decline of the Great House in transatlantic literature, from the Victorian novel into literary modernity. It ends, as all serious scholarship should, with David Byrne, bicycles, and movies. Ding ding.
In the classroom, I teach high school and college courses in literature, history, storytelling, race, and gender. I’m currently at The Denver Waldorf School in Colorado.
Elsewhere, I served on the board of directors for City Park Jazz, where I advocated for including student performers in the concert series and started the student pre-show. I also reported audience stories, à la Humans of New York, for various social media channels. Back in the day, I founded the web presence for Great Education Colorado, Colorado PTA, and other Colorado education nonprofits. Whether teaching, researching, or building, I’ve been advocating for youth representation and quality education for more than 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 xTwitter profile, you will know that I read a lot, and I believe in science. And, yes, that Barack Obama follows me. It’s probably because I have impeccable taste in music.