About Me

I grew up in Texarkana, Texas (a small-ish town on the border of Texas and Arkansas that serves as a pit stop between Little Rock and Dallas), and I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater from Baylor University in Waco, Texas (Sic' em Bears!) Later, I went back to school to become an English teacher, attending University of Pittsburgh to take my English classes and Ursuline College for a Masters in Education. I have also recently taken graduate courses in English at Cleveland State University.

I have lived in Texarkana, Texas; Waco, Texas; Jackson, Mississippi; New York, New York; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and in various locations here in the Cleveland area. My husband is from Cleveland and that is how I ended up here. We met as actors in New York City, but we decided to leave the big city behind to raise our family. I love living in Cleveland! I even love the winters :) We have one son named Ben who attends Olmsted Falls School. Go Bulldogs! And one dog named Emmet.

In addition to teaching 9th Grade Language Arts and AP Composition and Language, I am also the Masquers Advisor.

In my spare time, I enjoy reading, seeing plays and movies, and walking Emmet!

My Teaching Philosophy

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

This is one of my favorite quotes because I am the type of person who wants to know all of the answers NOW. But education and learning is about embracing the questions, living in that uncomfortable place of confusion. I have to remind myself that if I'm not struggling then I'm not learning. My goal is to help students embrace the struggle.