Teaching
My teaching and mentorship principles are based on individual-object interactions, learning community, and teaching as research.
I approach the classroom as a research project, creating activities based on real-life problems, leading students to develop their own projects, fostering their critical thinking and independence.
By teaching geosciences I want my students to be in touch with the natural environment, what furthers their curiosity and understanding of the Earth processes through their own experience, as well as becoming aware of societal impacts to the environment and how to address them in their lives.
Field Camp in Sicily, University of Milano-Bicocca
Teaching assistant, Instructors of record: Sergio Ando' and Pietro Sternai
I was teaching assistant in the 2020 Field Camp in Sicily, as part of the Geology undergraduate curriculum in the University of Milano Bicocca.
We taught students about the geology of southern Italy and the Mediterranean region, from the Paleozoic metamorphic rocks to the Cenozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks, teaching them how to make a geological map.
GEOS 496-596 "Hands-on Geochronology", University of Arizona
Instructor of record, co-taught with Mauricio Ibanez-Mejia
Mauricio and I taught this class for the first time at the U of A for undergraduate and graduate students of the Geosciences curriculum.
We used rock samples from the Adirondack Mountains, US as the study object of a research project. The research was focused on the Grenville Orogeny in North America, a Precambrian history of collision from the Rodinia Supercontinent.
Students worked with a metapelite and a metagabbro, performing all the steps of sample preparation, analyses, and interpretation for U-Pb dating in zircon, monazite, and apatite. To fully understand the geological context, they also worked with geochemistry data to constrain metamorphic P-T conditions of their rocks.
Their work was published at the GeoDaze Conference and you can check their abstracts here and their posters for the metapelite and the metagabbro here.
Part of the student's poster at GeoDaze, Spiewak et al., 2025.
Introduction to Petrography, University of Milano-Bicocca
Teaching assistant, Instructor of record: Dr. Nadia Malaspina
I was research assistant for Introduction to Petrography in 2021 and 2022. This course taught by Prof. Malaspina introduces the basics of rock and mineral recognition, description, and interpretation of geological processes to form them. I worked moslty in the lab, teaching students how to analyse and understand metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary rocks.
Ophiolite from the Monviso, Italian Alps
Metamorphic Petrology, Federal University of Parana
Teaching Assistant, Instructor of Record: Dr. Carlos Eduardo de Mesquita Barros
I worked as teaching assistant for Metamorphic Petrology in 2017. This course was lecture and lab based, and I worked mostly in the microscopy lab teaching students how to recognize and describe metamorphic rocks. I work with the concepts of mineral assemblage, metamorphic facies, grade, and textures. I have to say, I really love metamorphic rocks under the microscope, so I really enjoyed teaching this class.
Thin-section of a biotite-garnet schist from the Southern Ribeira Belt, southern Brazil. Muller, 2017
Find my teaching journal for this class here.