I am pleased and proud to be starting my 11^th year at Centerville.  Most of those years have been spent teaching first grade, but I have been fortunate to be able to return to Kindergarten twice and then loop back to first grade with many of the same students.

This is year I am going to be teaching 2^nd grade. I am excited about the chance it provides for me to grow and learn a new curriculum as an educator. This is not a looping move so most of the children I will have will be new to me. I will  have 3 familiar faces in my 2^nd grade classroom from last year.

This is my 15^th year in the county. Before I was at CES, I was at Twin Ridge Elementary teaching 3^rd grade for  two years, then looping (hmmm, I sense a trend) to 4^th.  Then I did a year there as a Reading Interventionist.  

I guess looping three times (and considering doing it again) makes me officially ‘loopy’. It is something I believe strongly in and I am blessed to have principals that also feel it is a valuable thing to do.

My teaching career began in NY state (where I also received my BS in Education and MS in Education-Reading from SUNY at Cortland). I taught in upstate NY for 5 years, then in Saudi Arabia for 3 ½ (I took 9 years off to be at home with my children before they started school themselves), and then 1 ½ years in Santiago, Chile.

I have been married to my husband Bill for 30 years. We have two amazing ‘children’. Mandy is 25 and a graduate from UMd at College Park, with a degree in Bio-engineering and is currently in a Masters program at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.  My son Billy, who is 23, is also a graduate from UMd at College Park, but his degree is in Mechanical Engineering. He and his wife both work in the tech industry in NOVA.

BTW (in case you were wondering): My husband has a BS in Engineering from Clarkson University (in NY).

I recently received a necklace with a charm that says “Love the life you live“ and on the flip side says “Live the life you love”. It is wonderful that teaching just happens to be what I love to do.