A LITTLE MORE ABOUT ME

A Professional Educator and Home-school Mom

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I originally hail from CT, and from a long line of educators. With family members such as a grandmother who taught in a 1-room schoolhouse on the Iowa prairie, and a grandfather who still holds a spot in the eschelons of longest-sitting University presidents, there was always an inherent expectation that I would attend UCONN and become a teacher. So I went to ASU and earned a business degree instead. Don't get me wrong, that's not to say I didn't have the utmost respect for all of their work, I absolutely did. I just wanted to forge a different path.

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It wasn't until I had my own family that I quite literally fell into the field of education. Following the birth of our third son Erik, I began helping in my oldest son's kindergarten classroom, working with Spanish speaking students who were too young for ELL services, and who could not understand what was happening in the classroom.

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I was promptly hired as an aide at that same school, even though I really had no intention of working at that time, and was immediately endorsed by the principal for an accelerated teacher licensure program. I completed my licensure, and followed up by earning 2 Master's degrees and my Principalship License as well. I completed all coursework for a 3rd Master's degree, in Science Education, but stopped short of taking final comps. Feel free to read my thoughts on testing.

Several years into my teaching career, I was approached by members of the College of Education at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. I was asked if I would serve as a mentor teacher and site coordinator for the Professional Development School arm of their Teacher Education Program. This involved designing and teaching pertinent seminars for student teachers and their cooperating teachers; and supervising, evaluating, and mentoring cohorts of teacher candidates. The same year, I was approached by UCCS's sister teacher education program, the Resident Teacher Program with Pikes Peak BOCES. This is a two-year alternative licensure program with classes on the weekends. I was concurrently hired to design curricula, and be the lead elementary instructor for the first and second year cohorts. I have maintained my work with UCCS since 1998, and continue to design classes, coach, and teach for Pikes Peak BOCES. My most recent projects include developing Interest-Based research projects for graduate students, as well as developing Multi-Tiered Support Systems (MTSS)/Teacher Involvement Projects for in-service teachers. 

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The fact that I continued as a classroom teacher at the same time allowed me to blend theory with practice as I taught my graduate classes, which provided me with the very necessary empathy and understanding for what classroom teachers were expected to accomplish and required to do.

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It was also during this period that we decided our sons needed some major changes to their schooling. Our 2 older sons, Karl and Cody, were in 4th and 2nd grade respectively, and their needs were simply not being met. They were performing well above grade level, and were quite young as compared to their classmates. We watched them go from being excited and ready for school at 6 a.m. to barely eating breakfast because they were genuinely upset with having to go. After trying a couple of different schools, we opted to bring them home, where we home-schooled them until their senior years. In fact, senior year was the only year of public school Erik attended. Following their public school experiences, all three of our sons received their diplomas, which quite frankly is the only reason we had them do senior year in the first place. They graduated with honors, and each of them was also chosen by the faculty and students to be senior speaker at their respective graduations. Our oldest son has since graduated law school, and is also an actor with the Screen Actors Guild. Our middle son completed medical residency, specializing in emergency medicine, and is a medical education fellow; and our youngest son is a music composer, singer, and performer, with aspirations of Broadway, and is about to complete a graduate program in counseling psychology at the University of Denver.

Academia aside, we all do surprisingly make time for other hobbies and activities. As a family, we love movies, all outdoor activities, and traveling when time affords. I also enjoy reading, sports, art, music, hiking, convincing the world that I should be the next Secretary of Education, eating smoked salmon, and playing with our silver labs Jarl and Bryn!