“Always find opportunities to make someone smile and to offer random acts of kindness in everyday life.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
While I love my profession now, when I was growing up, I never thought that I would be a teacher. In fact, I wanted to be a cruise director due to my love of adventure and travel. However, every day in a classroom filled with teenagers satisfies that yearning for that non-ordinary day that a cruise would have offered.
I discovered my enjoyment of adolescents when I was a dining room manager at a suburban Detroit restaurant. One day I announced to my husband and young daughter, “I’m going back to college in order to become a teacher.” Believe me, no one was more shocked than me!
Although I was a non-traditional student, as I was pregnant with my younger daughter while I was attending classes, I did obtain my Bachelor’s Degree with a Spanish major, English minor, and a bilingual endorsement from Saginaw Valley State University. After being hired at Tawas Area Schools, I returned to SVSU and received my Master’s Degree in secondary administration. I am now teaching in my 24th year at Tawas, and I daily look forward to students’ eyes light up when lessons click! Besides my husband, Bill, daughters, Mandy and Kayla, a fantastic son-in-law, Zachary, and my first grandchild, Atlas, my extended family includes my mom, three brothers, numerous in-laws, and a gaggle of nieces and nephews. Whenever possible, we gather for outdoor sporting games, indoor euchre tournaments, or just bonding time that usually includes “loveable insults.” When I’m not teaching and spending time with my family and friends, I am consuming chocolate, reading, enjoying art, and photography. My favorite hobby is traveling, and I’ve been blessed to have toured numerous countries. My adventurous spirit has included some of the following: riding a hot air balloon over Napa Valley with a birthday-celebrating friend, helicoptering onto an Alaskan glacier with my husband where we recited our vows, and zip-lining through the clouds with student-travelers in Costa Rica. If I am able, I will continue to thrive with adventure via traveling and teaching!
“All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” – Samuel Johnson