My Loves & Passions

I love teaching!  I love helping people find the “Ah ha’s” in their life, their passions, and their creative side: reaching their goals.  I love the earth and its beauty and want to help others to love it too.

I love living in the Santa Cruz Mountains, gardening, playing with my dogs, and riding my horses out on the trails.  Hubby & I go down to his family’s place in the Abacos in the Bahamas where it is beautifully unique.  My favorite cause is to try to help my friend Mimi save the endangered wild horses of Abaco , the Royal Potcake Society and Marianne’s Abaco Humane Society (lots of feral dogs & cats that need homes, mine is full of them!).

Educationally, I started out at UCSB as an English major with an art history minor.  I got involved as and environmental journalist and then changed my major to Environmental Studies with a botany emphasis.  I graduated from UCSC and then earned my teaching credential there as well, designing and implementing the after-school daycare program at Lakeside School as my exiting project.  I have focused a lot of my post-baccalaureate studies in Gifted & Talented Education as well as writing and technology as it applies to education.  I have been an educational consultant with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, participated in the JASON Project for numerous seasons, along with the Steelhead Trout Educational Project.  I have been fortunate to study under Sandra Kaplan at USC in Gifted & Talented education, as well as  Donald Graves, Lucy Calkins, and other inspirational writers in the Bay Area Writing Project.  The Tech Museum has been a great inspiration for me to have students work cooperatively on design challenges. Being able to study the roots of our country in Colonial Williamsburg during their summer institute was quite a treat (especially being able to witness "Patrick Henry" deliver his famous Liberty or Death speech on the steps of the Capitol in Williamsburg on the Fourth of July!).