ABOUT
THE WORLD IS MY CLASSROOM

Meg Pierce, founder of The World Is My Classroom, spent two decades as an educator, almost half of which was spent internationally, before returning to her hometown of San Diego to start a third career in Marketing. She earned her B.A. in English with a minor in Mass Media from the University of San Diego, and later returned for graduate school to earn her California teaching credentials in English and history, and her clear credential at University of California San Diego extended studies. She completed her A.A. in Marketing in Summer 2023. In addition to The World Is My Classroom, she is Marketing Manager for Oceanside Theatre Company, where she loves being a part of the Arts community. 

 

As a teacher living in diverse neighborhoods of Southern California, as well as having been a white teacher in classrooms with primarily black African students in West Africa, Pierce understood the importance of representation in literature. As a white, heterosexual, non-neurodivergent, able-bodied (but not always in shape) woman, she could never be the voice of diversity, but what she could do as a literature and history teacher, was to give students books and readings by those who could represent these diverse perspectives. 

 

Doing so required a great deal of learning - from colleagues, from students, from authors and from the internet - and  a great deal of time - to find the books that would interest students, and create meaningful lesson plans, based on the standards at an appropriate level. She is still learning all of the time. The process is endless. There is no "woke" as far as she is concerned, only a never-ending awakening. One of the most important lessons, she took away from her years as a literature teacher in West Africa was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Danger of a Single Story.” 

 

Arising out of her surprise that 23 years after she had graduated high school, her son’s California high school was still teaching the same literature by primarily dead, white men, Pierce founded The World Is My Classroom to encourage teachers, schools, and districts to teach more diverse literature as part of their core curriculum, and to give them the tools to make it easier to do so. The goal of The World Is My Classroom is to help readers and educators find literature from cultures across America and around the world that interests them and their students. 

 

In addition to books and theater, Pierce is a lover of nature and hiking and a life-long advocate of women’s sports and soccer. You can read more about the intersection of sports and the fight for gender equality on her new blog Pitch Progress.