I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, with my parents and my two younger brothers.  My father was a mechanical engineer, and my mother was an orthopedics nurse.  My husband is a process engineer at ThermoFisher Scientific.  We have two sons, two daughters, three children-in-law, three granddaughters, a grandson, and another coming in October 2024.  Our family loves sharing adventures in the outdoors.  We live in the foothills of Whitney, just east of Preston, Idaho.

I came to Cache Valley to attend Utah State University in 1992.  One summer I attended a study abroad experience at Cambridge University in England, focusing on 19th century British novels and Shakespeare.  I graduated with a Bachelors degree in English with an emphasis in Technical and Professional Writing in 1995.  Textbook editing and raising my four children kept me busy for 17 years.  Then, I graduated with a Bachelors degree in Elementary Education in 2009 and added an Elementary Math endorsement in 2013.  I came to EBLS in 2017 after teaching fifth grade for seven years in the Cache County School District, Logan, Utah.  I taught fourth grade for three years, and in October 2020 I joined the first grade team.   My Masters in Education Curriculum and Literacy Instruction journey spanned 2018 through 2022.  I completed my LETRS literacy instruction training and my Teaching Reading endorsement in 2023 and was honored to be one of 200 teachers nationwide chosen for the University of Florida Literacy Institute (UFLI) sponsored classroom project during the 2024-2025 school year.  I team-taught USU's ELED 4030 Language Arts and Writing course with Dr. Laura Reina and Mr. Stuart Baggaley in 2024 and continue to bring pre-service teachers and young writers together for writing workshops.

My work with perspectives at the Bear River Massacre is featured in an article titled "Accurate, age-appropriate and sensitive: reconsidering how to teach the Utah Studies fourth grade social studies core" with Dr. Emma Mecham, Dr. Eric Newell, Dr. Laura Reina, and Darren Parry (Social Studies Research and Practice, 2021, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 179-190. https://doi.org/10.1108/SSRP-11-2020-0049).  I am also a contributing author of an article titled "Cultivating staff culture online: how Edith Bowen Laboratory School responded to COVID-19" (Information and Learning Sciences, Vol. 121 No. 5/6, pp. 453-460. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-04-2020-0136).  

I am a certified Utah Master Naturalist.  During Summer 2021 I focused on teaching writing at the Central Utah Writing Project.  I contribute nature preservation and education www.WildAboutUtah.org segments on Utah Public Radio that also appear in our Herald Journal.

My favorite hobbies are collecting interesting rocks, reading children's literature, noticing poetry in sunrises and sunsets, gobbling Reese's peanut butter cups, painting trees and wildflowers, and exploring varied landscapes on UTVs and on foot.