Four decades of teaching
Classroom teacher and special educator
Master’s in special education
Many ways to reach every learner
2022 Presidential Award
Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching
01
MY BEGINNING
Math wasn’t always my thing.
I was a reader. A writer. A storyteller. A math teacher? That was another story.
As a child, math made no sense to me. If anyone had told me I would someday build a website dedicated to math, I would have offered to sell them swampland in the Sahara.
When I began student teaching in the mid-eighties, I thought any child receiving math instruction from me would be sorry indeed. I loved crafting stories, plays, and poetry. Math was something you endured to get by.
Calculators had been invented by then, and I believed wholeheartedly that they had been sent straight from the Almighty to save people like me.
02
THE TURNING POINT
Then math began to make sense.
As a special educator, I co-taught with a middle school math teacher who finally helped me understand mathematics conceptually. That changed everything.
Learning to teach reading through multisensory approaches, including Orton-Gillingham and Wilson, sparked another realization: students struggling with math also needed different ways to access ideas, make connections, and express their understanding.
Helping my own child through significant math struggles made that work deeply personal.
03
WHAT MATTERS MOST
Connection comes first.
The lesson that changed my teaching most was about community. I came to understand that a strong community, rooted in love, can change everything for a person.
A sense of belonging helps children feel safe enough to take risks, make mistakes, ask questions, and trust their own thinking. Confidence grows from those experiences. And from there, miracles happen.
“My hope is that every child, including the one who thinks they hate math, finds a place at the table.”
04
STILL A STORYTELLER
A little more
about me.
I hold a master’s degree in special education, and in 2022, I received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST). For someone who once dreaded math, that recognition holds special meaning.
I am also a published author of educational articles, plays, and a young adult novel. The reader and writer in me is still very much here, now joined by a math teacher who finds joy in helping children discover what they can do.
LET’S BRING MEANING TO MATH
Confidence grows. Connections deepen. Math comes alive.
Through this website, I share classroom-tested routines, songs, movement, and creative experiences that help children build number sense and find their mathematical voices.