About Me

I am a state certified teacher with a Master of Arts in Teaching degree. I have endorsements in Health/Fitness, Art, and Middle Grades Mathematics. I am currently enrolled in a CTE certificate program and have registered and am waiting for WEST-E testing centers to re-open to add a Middle Grades Humanities endorsement. I am looking to serve a diverse community of students and families and work with adolescents. I work to help every student be a capable, creative, caring, and responsible member of their community. I support multi-sensory experiential learning, respectful and productive discourse, and a passion for learning.

The 2019-2020 school year, I taught 7-12th grade students at the Jefferson Community School in Port Townsend. My classes included algebra, art, digital media, humanities project block, health and fitness, PSAT-prep, and STEM activities. For the previous four years, I worked with the Calyx Community School at the South Whidbey State Park. I also co-led an after school "Girl Explorers Team" at the South Whidbey Elementary School through Calyx. Concurrently, I created and led the kindergarten gardening program at South Whidbey Elementary School, worked as a substitute for k-12 at South Whidbey and Coupeville school districts, and nursery-8th at the Waldorf school.

In addition to teaching, I grew up in Alaska and have experience commercial fishing, sailing, learning to fly small airplanes, and rappeling into crevasses while living on the ice fields doing research for a summer. Currently I've been designing, developing and building my land from drawing and submitting architectural plans to framing and operating the excavator, and working towards developing food self-sufficiency with animal husbandry and permaculture. My undergraduate degree included work on fiber farms and learning every step of the process from birthing, raising, and shearing a sheep to felting, spinning, weaving, knitting, or sewing to create a finished textile. I have been a part of the canine search and rescue team on Whidbey for the last 6 years including acting as training coordinator and co-leading the the navigation training course. I am a backpacking enthusiast with experience traversing 20 miles off trail in the back country to reach elusive hot springs and had the pleasure of serving as a chaperone with Nels Bergquist and the 8th grade SWMS students on a week-long backpacking trip on the Olympic Coast. In the past I've been involved with theater and debate/public speaking. I earned my Girl Scout Gold Award (like "Eagle Scout") by creating a teen resource guide for my community addressing a range of needs and issues.

I love being a teacher. I have many hobbies and interests and have worked in a variety of fields, but what is most fulfilling and rewarding to me is teaching. I love watching students have "ah-ha moments" when something finally clicks and seeing the excitement and pride in their faces as they feel learning happening. I love seeing a student engage and take a risk in their learning. I love the challenge of trying to find a new way to explain something or make content relevant and relatable to a student who's struggling. I love watching students grow in confidence and as humans in our community. Teaching has been my calling since I was in elementary school and had such great teachers I felt compelled to pass on the gift they had given me.

One of my unique skills as a teacher that I bring is the ability to wear many hats. I am passionate about teaching and working with students, and strive to be a well-rounded, capable, competent person to fill the role that is needed. I aim to be flexible with shifting needs and continue to pursue additional endorsements and areas of expertise to be able to support students in many subject areas as needed and present an integrated interdisciplinary approach to any subject. Familiarity across many subject areas also is beneficial for collaborating on projects with other teachers to create engaging, high-impact work.

Something else I bring to teaching is a deep commitment to my students. I connect well with my students, looking for ways to relate learning to what they are passionate about so they may be passionate about learning and growing. I bring rich, diverse life experiences to my teaching to relate to and inspire students. I have a love of hands-on and discussion based learning that allows the students to be active participants in their education. I have been working over the last few years in settings that require collaborative development of individualized instruction and curriculum with fellow educators, the student, and their family. My students know I am invested in them and their success.

Each student and their family represents diversity in some way which can be celebrated and integrated into their daily learning to enrich the community and best support the student. Each student comes to class with prior knowledge and expertise about something in their lives.

Quality education is critical to creating positive change in the world and critical in our community. Students need a strong foundation in knowing themselves in order to reach their fullest potential in the world professionally and all other ways. I want my students to develop social-emotional, communication, and stress reduction skills and to feel confident in knowing who they are and how to pursue meeting their needs confidently and kindly in this world.