My professional experience

I have been in education for 17 years. I enjoyed a full school year of student teaching at A.B. Miller High School in Fontana, Ca., where I was placed with 10 other student teachers, and our advisor from UC Riverside would meet with us on the high school campus twice per week.  That was a powerful year for me, which helped me to establish my teaching style.  Upon graduation I was offered a position at A.B. Miller, but opted to accept a position closer to home in Corona, CA at Santiago High School.  There I taught English and Honors English, as well as Journalism, which led to me stepping in as advisor for the school newspaper. At Santiago I was also an assistant track and cross country coach, which was something I was passionate about.  I taught there for three years, and still remain in touch with several of my former students and athletes from those first years of teaching. In fact, five of them attended my wedding :)  

My husband and I moved to Yucaipa, and I was hired at Moore Middle School in Redlands Unified School District to teach seventh and eighth grade English and Honors English.  I was advisor to the running club and a club for girls called Dream Weavers.  I taught there for three years.

We moved again after our first son was born, to San Diego County, which is where we always aspired to settle down.  I was hired at Vista High School and taught ELD 2 and ELD 4 there for six years.  I had never taught ELD before, but quickly found that it was my niche.  Many of my students were at risk students, and I worked really well with them.  That position challenged me in many ways, but I loved my work and my students.  While at Vista High I established the Creative Writing Club and collaborated with another teacher to create and publish a literary arts magazine, titled Collected, of student writing and artwork.  While at Vista High I was the social committee chair and a member of the Marzano committee, which looked at current educational research and worked to implement change on the Vista High Campus. I was also an advisor for Safe School Ambassadors and participated in Breaking Down The Walls.

From there I accepted a position at Palomar High School in Vista Unified, and stayed there for four or five years until the district closed down that school and I became founding faculty at Vista Visions Academy, where I am currently teaching English 9, English 10, English 11, Creative Writing, and am a student advisor.  I am our school's WASC coordinator as well.  The past few years I have begun to present sessions on educational technology at our district professional development days. Just last month I accepted a position with Vista Unified to work as a Blended and Online Learning Resource Teacher (first time this position has ever existed in our school district), and since I expressed an interest in still remaining working with students part of the time, they offered me the resource teacher position 50% and allowed me to remain as a teacher at Vista Visions 50%.  They hired my partner Vicki to do the same thing, so we share those contracts.

All of this has made up my 17 year journey in education so far.  I wonder where the path will take me next?

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