You will never meet a person -- child or adult -- who doesn’t want to know how to read. As a child, my parents surrounded me with literature from The Little Prince to Black Beauty (and maybe even a copy or two of The Babysitter’s Club). And so when I later encountered students at a youth center in Washington, DC who did not yet share the magic of books, a passion was ignited. Growing up in a city like DC, I saw privilege and poverty. I decided that I would work to ensure that what was possible for some children became possible for all.
After receiving a B.A. in Early Childhood Education and Child Development from Vanderbilt University, I went on to teach 3rd grade at the American school in Valencia, Venezuela. Here, I began to learn the art of nurturing young students as they build their personal reading and writing lives. Upon returning to DC, I worked as a 2nd grade teacher and later as a K-5 Literacy Coach. I am privileged to join the passionate educators of HTeXplorer this year as a School Leadership Program Resident. Like Explorer, my roots are grounded in a commitment to the social and emotional development of young learners. I will always be inspired by the life lessons and universal truths my students discovered through the book characters we met. As we learned from Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius, we all “must do something to make the world more beautiful.”
While in San Diego, you will find me chasing live music, waterways, yoga studios, running trails and local hidden gems (!Vamos a México!) … most often on a beach.
