Biography

This is my 14th year as a teacher. Prior to teaching, I worked as an editorial assistant at a college level textbook publisher in Philadelphia and as a marketing assistant at Prudential Securities in New York City. These positions required lots of organization and tracking of projects, and I fell in love with coding and developing. I started with Excel spreadsheets, then Paradox relational databases, and finally Lotus Notes workflow management systems (more relational databases) and SQL. My employers sent me to many classes to learn these skills, and I also taught myself. By the late 1990's I was working for myself, consulting with small companies to build Lotus Notes systems.

I had taken computer science classes in both high school and college. At Shaker High School, in Latham NY, I learned BASIC. At Cornell University, I took a Pascal course. I loved both of those courses, but never condered computer science as a career because in the 70's and 80's when I was growing up, coders were stereotypically male. The closest I got to coding was when my father, an engineer, brought home used IBM punch cards and gave them to me to use in arts and crafts projects.

I never saw female coders, only males like those depicted in the movies War Games, Tron, Wierd Science, and The Last Starfighter.

Once I became a teacher, I realized the influence I could have on young women, in encouraging them to learn coding. I know that I could earn more money by working in industry, but I feel I have a much larger impact on the field by encouraging more students from margianalized groups to learn about computer science. I find such satisfaction in shepherding students into this creative, influential field!

Emma Willard School

This is my fifth year teaching at a historically girls' school, Emma Willard School, in Troy, NY.

I teach Algebra 2 and two computer science courses -- AP Computer Science Principles and AP Computer Science A
I run three major clubs under the umbrella CREATE, which stands for Coding, Robotics, and Engineering AT Emma
- The Coding Club meets once a week and has two levels of participation:
  - Beginners: we are learning Python through CodeHS. The goal by the end of the year is to create some machine learning and data science projects using Python.
  - Advanced: we focus on competition level coding for a variety of competitions, including the ACSL, the Siena College High School Programming Competition, Advent of Code, and hackathons, among others.
- The Robocs Club meets once a week. Throughout the year we are building and coding several type of robots
  - VEX IQ robots, which are traditionally for elementary and middle school students, but I've found they're great for high school because they build quickly and we can spend more time coding all the fun sensors. I and my students are excited to bring these robots to a local elementary school in the spring semester to teach students there some basic building and coding skills.
  - SeaPerch underwater robots. This is our first year building them at Emma (although I've had teams at my school in New Jersey compete in SeaPerch). We are planning to build three, test them in our own pool, and hope to compete with them.
- SWE NEXT is our brand-new-in-2022 Engineering Club. SWE NEXT is affiliated with SWE (the Society of Women Engineers) and is the high school level club.
  - We meet once a month for guest speakers, engineering activities, and field trips.
  - November: civil engineer guest speaker
  - December: field trip to Global Foundaries to see how semiconductor chips are made
  - January: meet and greet with SWE students at Rensselaer
  - February: biomedical engineer guest speaker
  In addition to the above, I mentor juniors and seniors who are completing Signature (Capstone) projects in robotics and computer science. As part of this, I have partnered with an Emma alumna to encourage students to complete the Harvard CS50 course in the fall semester, and then build a project with their new skills in the spring semester. The alum has provided funding for students to get their Harvard CS50 course certified through EdX.

Math Teacher

From the time I was in elementary school, I knew I someday would be a teacher. My favorite books as a child were Little House on the Prairie; I was enthralled by the descriptions of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her journey as a teacher. When I was in 4th grade, I loved making worksheets and lesson plans; I would force my younger sister and her friends to "play school" on weekends and summer breaks.

At Cornell, I took classes for a concentration in Education, and almost applied for Teach for America, but I backed out when I realized that at 21 years old I looked like a teenager. There was no way I was going to command a classroom of students when I looked exactly like them. I decided to wait, get some industry experience, and become a teacher once I had children.

From 2004 to 2009, I was a student at Monmouth University, earning my Master of Arts in Teaching Secondary Mathematics. I earned 76 credits, some for my graduate degree, and some in content area courses in Math and English. (I couldn't decide if I wanted to be a Math or English teacher. I have always loved both. So I took enough courses and the Praxis exams to qualify for both.)

I completed my student teaching semester in secondary mathematics in the fall of 2008 at Freehold Township High School in Freehold, NJ. I was committed to finding ways to effectively use technology with students who did not own graphing calculators. I took students to the computer lab in the library to use Geogebra and online graphing programs. As a result, my supervising professor nominated me for--and I won!--the 2009 NJ Distinguished Student Teacher of the Year Award. I also won an award at graduation: the Graduate Student of the Year from the College of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction.

My first job after graduate school was as a teacher at a public school in Lawrence, NJ: Lawrence High School.

Computer Science Teacher

My first year at Lawrence High School, I introduced myself to my students as a career changer, new to teaching, who used to be a computer programmer. One of my students that year approached me and asked if I would be willing to teach a computer science course. He had been trying to get a class at Lawrence HS for several years, but there was no teacher to teach it. I said that I would love to teach it, "if you can get it approved". Well, he did!

The next year I started an Introduction to Computer Science course, teaching this curriculum from Stanford, which included Karel the Robot Learns Java, and the first few chapters from the Roberts book, The Art and Science of Java.

I had never considered teaching computer science, simply because it was not even an option in my MAT program. But I immediately fell in love with teaching it.

At the Ranney School in Tinton Falls, NJ, I spent 6 years building a CS program. My first year there I taught eight students in one Intro Java course. My last year there I taught 82 students in five CS classes: AP CS A, AP CS Principles, and Honors Computer Science. Along the way I also taught Robotics, Introduction to App Development (Android App Inventor) and Introduction to Web Design.

I am particularly proud of the fact that I worked hard to increase female representation in my classes at Ranney. As a female who has worked in the field of CS, I know how rare it is to find friendly female faces in the workforce. My first year at Lawrence, in a class of 14 students, I had two females. At Ranney, in that class of eight students, I also had two females. My third year teaching CS, when I taught two CS classes, I had two females total.

It seemed I was destined to only and always have at most two females. But then I started teaching Robotics, and something curious happened. I had four females that year. Then the next year I offered half-year App Development and Web Design courses, also in the hopes that more girls would enroll. It worked! I had four girls that year.

I started a Girls Who Code club when one of my App Development students asked me for it.

The following year, I piloted the new AP Computer Science Principles course, using the new code.org curriculum. I had six females out of 14 students. And then...

In 2017-2018, so many students wanted to take AP Computer Science Principles, that we ran three sections of 54 students total. Twenty-eight of them were female! The entire girls soccer team took it. Musicians took it (to learn coding for their light boards). Girls who wanted to study business in college took it because our college counseling department told them that business schools wanted students who knew CS.

I was so inspired teaching females CS that I took at job at an all girls boarding school, Emma Willard, in Troy NY, in the 2018-2019 school year. That year, I had 14 females in AP CS A. Eleven of them earned 4's and 5's on the AP Exam!

The next year, I started the AP Computer Science Principles course at Emma. It was so popular that I squeezed 18 students into a room that only could fit 16. But we made it work as I hated to turn any student away.

One of my most ambitious future goals for this school is to institute a computer science graduation requirement.