Originally from West Harlem in New York City, my experience as a writing teacher began long before I created a high school in Chicago. It started in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I taught high school students at an independent school called Marin Academy. My work on equity in education with educator Shane Safir and the students at Marin Academy and Balboa High School was the focus of the Emmy-nominated documentary Making the Grade. After leaving the Bay Area, I began teaching history and humanities classes at Francis W. Parker School and Perspectives Charter Schools in Chicago, always with writing as a key process to help students explore and articulate what they know and think.

I taught writing in the English department at the University of Minnesota and in the Program for Writing and Critical Inquiry at the University at Albany, State University of New York. I also served as the Principal of the Middle School at the United Nations International School and Head of the Upper School at Brooklyn Friends School in New York City.

While living in Chicago, I founded a high school where the city became our classroom. Writing was central to everything we did, giving students the tools to express their voices creatively and effectively. Whether they navigated the city’s politics, gang borders, economics, or learning expectations, writing helped them process and articulate what they experienced—often in ways that were new, different, and designed by them.

Now, while dividing my time between Manhattan and Hudson Valley, New York, I bring that same passion and experience to helping young writers. Together, we explore how writing can be a tool for thinking, creating, and sharing their worldviews.

I know credentials matter to some, so here are mine: I hold a PhD in American Studies, an MEd in Administration and Supervision, an MA in Education, and a BS in Sociology with minors in Black Studies and Writing. I’m also licensed as a K-12 principal in Illinois and certified in healing-centered engagement and mind-body social-emotional learning. I attended an independent school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan from 1st to 12th grade, which shaped my views on what education should—and mostly, what it shouldn't—be. That experience drove me to stay in schools, hoping to change them for all kids, especially those considered different.

You can learn about my writing here.

Mark was born into a working-class family and raised in Buffalo, New York. He earned his MFA from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Mark is the author of four poetry collections: AGAIN . . . (forthcoming from Coffee House Press); Social Poetics (Coffee House Press, 2020); Coal Mountain Elementary (Coffee House Press, 2009); Shut Up Shut Down (Coffee House Press, 2004); and Revenants (Coffee House Press, 2000). As a poet, playwright, essayist, social critic, and labor organizer, Mark's writing deeply reflects his commitment to documenting the injustices faced by the global working class.

Mark is the recipient of the Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism from Split This Rock, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Creative Capital Award. He has taught at St. Catherine University and Washington College, where he also served as director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House. He has led poetry workshops for workers and trade unions in Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Africa. Currently, Mark is a professor of English at Manhattanville College and the founding director, in collaboration with PEN America, of the Worker Writers School. He divides his time between Manhattan and upstate New York.