About Me

I came to teaching late. I worked for more than a decade for a daily newspaper before staying home with my young children. I took a position as an English teacher in 2006 when my husband's job in the furniture industry went with thousands of others to China.

I teach at West Caldwell High School in Caldwell County. My high school is poor and rural -- the deadly double whammy. Our students have many obstacles to success -- only part of which originate in the school. We have not given up though. Every year our faculty (we call ourselves the Warrior Family, and we mean it) takes these poor, rural students and teaches them what they need to know to succeed on high stakes testing and for our school to have testing result numbers on par with the other more affluent schools in the county.

When the economy went sour, I agreed to teach half-time English and half-time Family and Consumer Science to save a job. It's not as illogical as it seems. I was the Lifestyles Editor for the Hickory Daily Record for almost four years -- and I was the food columnist for years after I left the paper full time. After I had agreed to the half-time schedule, the principal and department head let me know I had to take and pass the Praxix subject area in FACS. So I've lived the anxiety dream nightmare of taking a test for which I had done none of the course work.  I read like mad the summer before and passed it. Oddly enough, I've found that now no matter how stressful my life becomes I don't have that particular anxiety dream any more.

A few years later, I transferred full-time to FACS, once again to save someone's job. I am the advanced foods specialist and the apparel specialist. That means I teach courses focusing on the commercial preparation of food and basic sewing skills and techniques. I have found that I enjoy teaching FACS, and the students who select themselves out of the academic wings into my elective courses need a teacher to show them the value of books and reading. Despite the fact that I had transferred out of the English Department, I continued my master's work in reading. I found that each class added something valuable to my daily practice of teaching.

Contact Me

West Caldwell High School
300 West Caldwell Drive
Lenoir, NC, 28645
(828) 758-5583
[email protected]