“Teaching is not filling up a pail, it is lighting a fire.” -William Butler Yeats

My deep-seated belief in social justice drives all I do in education. In my heart of hearts, I truly believe that education is the only path to freedom and equity and that all students deserve access to a quality education.

If my family had an early inkling that I would become a teacher, it was cemented when I organized a neighborhood nursery school in our backyard the summer before I turned 11. I loved spending my afternoons teaching younger children basic math and elementary reading; I even included physical education and recess in daily schedule!

Like Nicole, my career path as a teacher and administrator has been nontraditional. I’ve spent my 20-year career teaching in both public and independent schools both in the US and abroad. I also spent at least 13 summers working in Johns Hopkins University’s CTY (Center for Talented Youth) Summer Programs throughout the country as a teacher, academic dean and site director. Because of my work with CTY summer programs, I was recruited by Johns Hopkins University to move to Bermuda to serve as the Deputy Director for CTY Bermuda. Over the course of three years, I helped design and implement a program that provides acceleration and enrichment for academically talented students. I’m currently the English Language Arts Supervisor for STEM in Baltimore County, a hybrid position recently created to encourage literacy across content areas. I’ve been fortunate to have been challenged to teach diverse groups of students: struggling readers, traditional learners, exceptionally talented students, children from some of the wealthiest families in the world and children from some of the lowest socioeconomic areas.

Recognizing that mentoring has proven to be the most effective practice for improving teacher effectiveness, I joined Nicole in developing LessonCast as a method to multiply the effects of mentoring for a global audience. I’ve thrown myself into this project because I believe that voices of teachers need to rise to the top as our nation debates educational reform. I hope you join us as we move to share best teaching practices with other teachers in an effort to make all of us better practitioners of our craft!