For the start of my formal education, I earned my Bachelor’s Degree in Telecommunications & Film with a minor in Public Relations from Oral Roberts University.  I worked in television and in public relations in my “first career" in Tulsa, OK, for a year and then for four years in San Francisco, CA.

     After living in Japan, and then starting a family, I began volunteering in my children’s classrooms.  It was then that I rediscovered the joy of learning and discovered the joy of teaching.  I volunteered extensively in various grades in International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme schools in district 20 of Colorado Springs.  I also became a trained Love and Logic Facilitator having guided many parents in how to discipline children with love and natural consequences.  These experiences prompted me to embrace the idea of teaching as the next chapter in my life.  As such, I received my Masters in Art in Teaching from Colorado College.  Little did I understand, then, how much this would ignite the spark of change in my life.  I continue to seek, learn, change and grow as a teacher and facilitator.

     In the Colorado College Gifted and Talented Program, I worked with students studying how the brain learns, which began a life-long interest in cognitive neuroscience.  In the Whiz Bang Science Program, I inspired students with the science of Leonardo da Vinci.  In the Gifted & Talented summer learning program for children, I facilitated students learning about their own brain.  After teaching fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in Colorado Springs, where my students made record gains in math, reading, and writing.  One year, two students went from partially proficient to advanced in writing.    As my own children grew older, I began pursuing adult education, teaching at both Adult and Family Education and Pikes Peak Community College.  I am currently pursuing my Adult Basic Education certificate, to be completed by the end of 2019.