I have been at SCS since 2020 and have been teaching since 2016. My elementary and ELL endorsements are through CityU. I am Wired for Reading Level 3 trained. I also have an MFA in Children’s Writing through Simmons College and was a children’s bookseller for 8 years.

I have taught and assisted in many grades from preschool to undergrad, and my favorite has been reading intervention. When teaching beginning readers, much of our time is focused on learning phonics and other pre-reading skills through chants, discussions, and interactive games. For more advanced readers, I like to use quality literature to discuss, while still utilizing interactive phonics and morphology games. 

For math intervention, I empathize with students who struggle with numbers and calculations. Through my years of teaching math, I have found ways to break down each step of even a “simple” math problem into approachable segments. I also make sure every math concept is hyper hands-on.

Being neurodiverse myself, it really helps me understand the frustrations my neurodiverse students (dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, etc.) face in the classroom. I empathize that sometimes the approach that works for “everyone else” in the class makes zero sense and needing a different foundation is okay. Furthermore, I can help neurodiverse students see their valuable strengths and talents. (Disability is really an unfair label, as God made our brains to work in different ways. Dyslexic students can learn to read efficiently, and dyscalculia students can conquer math, it just takes a different pathway in the brain to get there. Many of history’s greatest leaders, inventors, scientists, artists …, were neurodiverse.) 

Some non-educational facts: I have two cats, Hunter and James. I attend Trinity Church Seattle (in Ballard), I commute by bike, I love sketching (mainly ink and watercolor) and digital drawing, and I love coffee and chocolate.