I am a person who has often taken divergent paths.  Before I became a teacher, I was a folk singer, an artist (of sorts), a social worker, and a baker.  I also assisted in managing a bookstore for a short time.  When I was finally ready for college, I already had a family started.  I attended Rutgers University campus for Arts and Sciences in Newark, New Jersey, where I studied sociology and elementary education.  I also worked part-time in a group home and raised my two-year-old son. 

After college graduation, my family and I moved back to Camp Hill where my father was in a nursing home.  I say we moved back to Camp Hill because that's where I lived as a high school student, graduating from CHHS in 1980.

We stayed in Camp Hill with my mother after my father died, and I began to substitute teach while my son was in elementary school.  Much to my surprise, Camp Hill School District contacted me and offered me a job.  I jumped at the opportunity and here I am today.  When I started, I had the chance to work with some of my high school teachers.  It was humbling and enlightening, but most of all, it was rewarding, and today I find myself surrounded by the most wonderful students and colleagues a teacher could ask for.  I am truly blessed by this community.

My own life has progressed too.  My son graduated from Camp Hill High School and went to art school at Tyler.  Now he is a graduate student at The School of Art Institute of Chicago.  My stepdaughter married, started Moda Salon in Mechanicsburg, had two wonderful daughters, and, just last year, a son.  I finished a master's degree, and recently I have been working on graduate credits through Penn State's World Campus Learning Design and Technology program.  

In all, life has been good to me even though I have taken some wandering paths.  After all, it is precisely those challenges and experiences that have made me the person I am today.