Beam Team

Emily Lee

Educator, Beam Pedagogy Co-Founder

Emily Lee is a teacher and facilitator based in Seattle. She teaches language arts, English language learning, art, and watercolor classes in high school youth and adult settings. She currently teaches at Highline College in Des Moines, Washington. Her teaching and facilitation practice center around storytelling and bridge building, which are shaped by her upbringing in a big immigrant family. Her other personal interests include pottery, watercoloring, and family history writing.

Amy Hirayama

Educator, Writer, Beam Pedagogy Co-Founder

Amy Hirayama is a mixed-race Japanese and white writer and educator from Seattle, Washington. She taught 8th grade Language Arts in Seattle Public Schools for seven years. Currently Amy teaches creative writing through Writers in the Schools, a Seattle Arts and Lectures program, and she also works as the Events and Residency Coordinator at Clarion West, a speculative fiction writers workshop. Amy is active in Seattle’s literary arts scene and you can often find her organizing public readings, facilitating writing workshops and finding creative ways to bring communities together. Food, family, humor and nature are her favorite things, so she writes about them a lot, sometimes all at once.