"I have a passion for helping kids become confident readers! As a child I struggled in early elementary and truly felt pushed through the system. Fortunately, as I grew reading eventually clicked and I developed a love for reading and writing. As an adult I made it my goal to find strategies to help my own kids develop skills of reading and reading comprehension as well as a love for reading. Some of those strategies include, but are not limited to: phonics study, identifying reading readiness signs in your child, separating the act of writing from the act of reading, and tandem reading.

I have four children ages 10, 8, 5 and 9 months and have been homeschooling for the last six years. We use curricula rich in literature. Some of my favorite reading and phonics resources are, Explode the Code, Spelling You See, Bob Books, The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching.

I had the opportunity to oversee the pre-K program in a homeschool co-op for two years. In that role I was responsible for planning weekly lessons in math, English, history, and science. In addition I spent one year at co-op as assistant teacher for the 4-6th grade class where I helped students keep up with the fast pace of the class.

In 2008 I had the privilege of traveling to Guinea, West Africa, to teach the children of a missionary family affiliated with Pioneer Bible Translators. The children were 10, 8, 4, and 1 year-old. Through a turn of events their house had burned down and they were having trouble continuing homeschooling their children, re-building their house, and keeping up with the Bible translation they were working on. I spent that summer getting the kids going again with their schooling.

I spent two years at Abilene Christian University (2007-2009) and a year and a half at Northern Virginia Community College (2009-2010). While at ACU I studied Biblical text and chemistry. At NVCC I studied pre-nursing." less...