Mike teaches and leads at the intersection of AI literacy, career-connected learning, purpose development, and moral inquiry — all to empower students to flourish in our rapidly evolving world.

Mike earned a BA in English and a MA in Education from Stanford University. He began teaching at North Star Academy in Newark, NJ, in 2005, serving as the founding English teacher for North Star’s second middle school. He taught middle school for 5 years and has taught high school for 17 years. He spent the first 15 years of his career teaching English and serving as an English instructional coach and department chair. For the past 7 years, he’s been building a purpose-development and career-connected learning program for 11th and 12th graders that students named “Summit.”

He's currently expanding the Summit program into an Innovation Studio at Uncommon Schools to explore and codify emerging pedagogies that support long-term student success. He also helps lead Uncommon's network-wide instructional AI strategy to support 20,000 students and 2,000 teachers across 53 schools. This past spring he co-taught an AI Literacy pilot based on an original "AI Driver's License" framework, collaborating with a Stanford researcher to study the learning environment that curriculum creates.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chalkbeat, and leading education texts including "Leverage Leadership", "Teach Like a Champion", and "Love and Literacy", as well as books by prominent education researchers.