About Me:
In 1993, I began teaching 7th grade English at Madison Middle School in Richmond, KY. I never planned on being a middle school teacher, because all of my training and background in secondary education. My undergraduate degree at EKU had been in secondary English teaching. I had student taught, taught summer school, and had done long-term substituting at Madison Southern High School, so I definitely thought high school was the place for me. I was given the opportunity to teach in a middle school by my former middle school principal, Doug Roberts. Mr. Roberts gave me a chance (after much shameless begging) and my love for teaching at the middle school level began there. I spent 15 years in the classroom, one of those going back to teach high school at Madison Central in 2005. I did love high school, but deep down, I was a self-proclaimed middle school fool, so I went back to teaching at MMS. In October of 2007, I began Literacy Coaching at MMS, and built upon my passion for helping teachers with their literacy instruction.
This passion for helping other teachers had been the foundational core of my Writing Project background. I became a Teacher Consultant for the EKU Writing Project in 1996 under the knowledgeable guidance of Dr. Charles Whitaker. Then, in 2004, I began working as a Co-Director with EKUWP under the leadership of Dr. Sally Martin. Spending each summer working with a group of twenty K-12 teachers in our Summer Institute, sharing ideas, modeling lessons, and allowing teachers to teach teachers showed me what a true professional learning community should be. By continuing to support these teachers year-round, I truly saw how best practice literacy instruction could transcend content and grade levels.
I was offered a tremendous leadership experience working as a Literacy Coach at MMS with Brad Winkler as my principal. He offered me many leadership opportunities and professional development experiences, in which I was able to learn more about leadership and literacy than ever before. In this work, I learned a tremendous amount about school administration, helped to design an RTI program to meet the needs of our struggling readers and of our GT students, and worked across content areas to help improve the literacy instruction in our school.
In 2011, I was accepted as one of eight teachers in Madison County's Next Generation Leaders cadre and furthered my learning about instructional leadership. Through this experience, I was able to job shadow and work with school principals and district leadership to learn how to best improve our schools and our instruction for our students.
Each of these experiences built upon my background and lead me to work with the Kentucky ELA Content Leadership Networks. After working with the networks in the SESC region as a teacher leader representative for Madison County, I then moved on to lead the ELA Network in the Central Kentucky Region. I strongly believe in the work of the ELA Networks. In 2013, the ELA Networks came to a close, and now, I am excited to serve as and LDC/NGLN Instructional Specialist and the State Lead for the Literacy Design Collaborative across the state of Kentucky. I feel that my love of literacy, leadership, and learning fuel my excitement about this position, and I have truly been blessed to have been chosen to work with teachers and administrators across the state.
If you are an educator and you have any questions about LDC or any resources that you would like to see added to our page, please contact me at [email protected] .
In 1993, I began teaching 7th grade English at Madison Middle School in Richmond, KY. I never planned on being a middle school teacher, because all of my training and background in secondary education. My undergraduate degree at EKU had been in secondary English teaching. I had student taught, taught summer school, and had done long-term substituting at Madison Southern High School, so I definitely thought high school was the place for me. I was given the opportunity to teach in a middle school by my former middle school principal, Doug Roberts. Mr. Roberts gave me a chance (after much shameless begging) and my love for teaching at the middle school level began there. I spent 15 years in the classroom, one of those going back to teach high school at Madison Central in 2005. I did love high school, but deep down, I was a self-proclaimed middle school fool, so I went back to teaching at MMS. In October of 2007, I began Literacy Coaching at MMS, and built upon my passion for helping teachers with their literacy instruction.
This passion for helping other teachers had been the foundational core of my Writing Project background. I became a Teacher Consultant for the EKU Writing Project in 1996 under the knowledgeable guidance of Dr. Charles Whitaker. Then, in 2004, I began working as a Co-Director with EKUWP under the leadership of Dr. Sally Martin. Spending each summer working with a group of twenty K-12 teachers in our Summer Institute, sharing ideas, modeling lessons, and allowing teachers to teach teachers showed me what a true professional learning community should be. By continuing to support these teachers year-round, I truly saw how best practice literacy instruction could transcend content and grade levels.
I was offered a tremendous leadership experience working as a Literacy Coach at MMS with Brad Winkler as my principal. He offered me many leadership opportunities and professional development experiences, in which I was able to learn more about leadership and literacy than ever before. In this work, I learned a tremendous amount about school administration, helped to design an RTI program to meet the needs of our struggling readers and of our GT students, and worked across content areas to help improve the literacy instruction in our school.
In 2011, I was accepted as one of eight teachers in Madison County's Next Generation Leaders cadre and furthered my learning about instructional leadership. Through this experience, I was able to job shadow and work with school principals and district leadership to learn how to best improve our schools and our instruction for our students.
Each of these experiences built upon my background and lead me to work with the Kentucky ELA Content Leadership Networks. After working with the networks in the SESC region as a teacher leader representative for Madison County, I then moved on to lead the ELA Network in the Central Kentucky Region. I strongly believe in the work of the ELA Networks. In 2013, the ELA Networks came to a close, and now, I am excited to serve as and LDC/NGLN Instructional Specialist and the State Lead for the Literacy Design Collaborative across the state of Kentucky. I feel that my love of literacy, leadership, and learning fuel my excitement about this position, and I have truly been blessed to have been chosen to work with teachers and administrators across the state.
If you are an educator and you have any questions about LDC or any resources that you would like to see added to our page, please contact me at [email protected] .
