Hola! This will be my 9th year teaching at Northwest Area Middle/High School (my 15 year in teaching). I teach Spanish I, II, III, IV, and AP. Last year I taught Sociology, and this year I am teaching Psychology.

I received my B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh in April 2007 with a double major in Spanish and Political Science. I then attended Pitt's School of Education to earn my M.A. in Teaching and my Pennsylvania State Teaching Certification, both of which I received in 2008. I had several years of experience teaching as a long-term sub at various school districts in PA before starting my position at Northwest.

I am currently certified to teach Spanish PreK-12, Social Studies 7-12, and English Language Arts 7-12.

On a personal note, I am a perfectly sane cat lady and a yogi.

The face of education has changed so much, just over the last twenty years since I was a high school student. In some ways, it makes being a high school teacher more difficult, and in some, it makes it more exciting, and even more important. Nowadays, nearly anything a student wants to know can be found just by pulling their phone out of their pocket and looking it up. We almost always have the vast resource of the Internet at our fingertips. So why go to school if you can learn anything you want to know just by looking up a YouTube tutorial?

Well, just because the knowledge is accessible, doesn't mean you can understand it. As teachers, it is our job to turn our students into INDEPENDENT learners. We are trying to teach HOW to learn. All the high-stakes testing that has been pushed on schools has buried that message. We aren't here to teach you discrete facts that you can regurgitate for a test, though learning facts may be part of it. We are here to teach you how to find reliable information, and how to evaluate it, and think critically. So think about what your job is as a student. Your job is to learn to learn. We are teaching you skills, which is why we can't just spoon-feed you exactly what you need to know to get an A. It's the learning that's important, not the grade.

Covid is not the only pandemic raging in the world of education right now. Cheating has become ever more prevalent in recent years. If you visit my Class Policies page, then you will see that I have a very lenient policy on grading. I do not believe that grades should be the end goal; learning and growth are what is important. But if your motivation for taking a class is getting that A, then I am not going to make it hard for you to earn it.

The key word in that last sentence is "earn". Learning requires active participation. Passively sitting and listening to a lecture is not enough to truly learn something. You need to actively engage with the material. That means using your brain and completing your assignments on your own. Not relying on copying answers from a friend or the Internet. You learn ZERO from cheating/plagiarizing, and a ZERO is what you will get for doing it. You will also lose the opportunity to complete any bonus assignments for that quarter.