Alumni-in-Residence: Sign Up for Office Hours with Inda Schaenen '83 P'15 of Normandy Schools Collaborative

The Loeb Center's Alumni-in-Residence program is excited to offer 20-minute office hour appointments with Inda Schaenen '83 P'15, MEd, MFA, PhD

Inda Schaenen '83 P'15 will join the Amherst College remote learning community on Tuesday, October 7th, to offer a limited number of virtual office hour appointments to current students who are interested in education professions and studies. These 20-minute appointments are available on a first-come, first-served basis and present an informal opportunity to converse with a graduate and gain advice about navigating your career path post-Amherst.

Inda is a writer, journalist, professor, and certified English language arts teacher in the Normandy Schools Collaborative. She is the author of Speaking of Fourth Grade: What Listening to Kids Tells Us About School in America (The New Press), four young adult novels, and a parenting guide, The 7 O’Clock Bedtime. Her work has appeared in Salon, the St. Louis Beacon, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Baltimore Sun, The Baltimore Messenger, The Towson Times, Baltimore Magazine, and the anthology Mommy Wars, among other publications.

Raised in New York City, and a St. Louis resident since 1991, Inda has taught in public, private, urban, metropolitan, and suburban schools, from second grade to graduate school. Since 2013, Inda has been serving in Normandy, a public district just north of St. Louis. Her essay in Education Week in September 2014 was one of many narratives that emerged about Normandy in the immediate aftermath of the state takeover and the death of Mike Brown, a Normandy alumnus.

In 2016, at the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation’s national symposium, Inda spoke about the relationship between schooling and community justice. Inda is founder and executive director of Project Lab St. Louis, an education nonprofit developed in the Normandy Schools Collaborative that has engaged hundreds of students from different St. Louis County communities in collaborative projects in the humanities.

In spring 2019 Inda was honored to receive the Courageous Educator Award by St. Louis’ Educators for Social Justice, and Project Lab St. Louis was recognized for inclusion and equity by FOCUS St. Louis in their annual “What’s Right with the Region” awards.

Inda is married to Michael Dee (Amherst 1980), a classroom teacher since 1981. They have three grown children and one grandchild.

Appointments are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Submit your resume today to sign up for a time slot!

To book appointments instantly, students must submit a Loeb Center-approved resume. (Learn about this approval process here.) 

To book without an approved resume, please upload / submit your pending document, then e-mail careers@amherst.edu with your availability.