About me

My name is Jo Ann Lu and I am lucky enough to be your child's kindergarten teacher for the 2025-2026 school year.

I am a Bay Area native. I was born and raised in Santa Clara County. I grew up in San Jose and attended Campbell Union School District for Kindergarten through middle school. I attended Blackford Elementary School and Monroe Middle School. I then attended Archbishop Mitty High School and moved down to Southern California after I graduated from AMHS. My intention was to become a physical therapist, so I attended CSU, Long Beach since the institution had a great PT program. I later found out that the physical therapy program was closed for undergraduate students since it became purely a Master's program, and so I had to find a new career path. Thus, I chose to pursue a career in education. It truly was a blessing in disguise.

My parents worked very hard to support my love of gymnastics and I started at the age of 3. As I improved, they drove me to practices every day and competitions. Unfortunately, due to many ankle injuries, my career in gymnastics came to an end. I was now ready to transition to coaching kids ages 6-10; This is where my love of working with children started and I worked at Kidnastics in Los Alamitos while attending college. It was fate and I knew I had to go into teaching.

So, I completed my undergraduate work in Liberal Studies, completed my student teaching in many classrooms in the Long Beach area, and received my teaching credential at Long Beach State University. I moved back to Northern California to be closer to my family after I completed all my qualifications to teach.

I decided to go back to school and I received my Master's Degree from National University in order to pursue my National Board Certification. I received my initial National Board Certification in early and middle childhood literacy and received my Master's Degree in NBCT Leadership in 2008. Then in 2018, I attempted to renew my NBCT status. I ended up renewing my certification and I will continue to re-certify to push my own learning!

I taught one year in San Jose Unified District, 11 years in Berryessa Union School District, and this is my 11th year in Cupertino Union School District. I transitioned to 4th grade in 2020, so I taught upper grade for 4 years. However, this year, I was afforded the opportunity to return to kindergarten! This will be my 23rd year in education. 

So, here I am and I'm so excited and motivated to keep doing the best that I can to teach and continue my own learning in my community where I live. I know we're going to have an amazing and memorable experience! 

My belief is that all individuals are special and have great potential to make a positive difference in this learning community. It takes effort, dedication, practice and a growth-mindset to make progress and persevere when obstacles arise. Still, we all can learn to be secure in making mistakes and do our best to learn from them if we embrace the mindset to learn from our experiences. I believe in instilling and modeling good manners to help all individuals show respect, kindness, as well as stand up for what he/she believes in! I strive to learn alongside my students and their families in this great world of education! We can all be life-long learners! The wonderful world is so inspirational and I see the beauty of the human spirit that our children of the future have to offer!

Thank you in advance for your ongoing support as I take on this new(ish) endeavor to teach upper grade students. As I mentioned, last school year was my first in 4th grade, yet that was via DL and then transitioned into concurrent teaching and learning. I will work alongside the students and the learning community to do my very best! Please just be open and honest so that we can constructively collaborate! I look forward to our work together!