I am celebrating 20 years at Capuchino in January 2018, and they have been fabulous years of growth and learning. My passion is teaching Algebra to English learners, which I have been doing for the last 15 years in the course Sheltered Algebra (I have also taught almost every math course offered at Cap from Algebra Support to IB Calculus). When I first became a teacher I felt hobbled by my mono-lingualism, so I enrolled in an intensive Spanish course in Madrid, Spain, to try and gain some linguistic flexibility. I spent six hours a day struggling to learn Spanish. My fellow classmates (most of whom were already polyglots, being that they were European) would laugh at my inability to roll my “r's” or fake a proper accent. Every day I went back to my apartment exhausted and defeated, yet determined to make it through the course. After that experience, I have nothing but awe, appreciation and respect for the struggle that my English learning immigrant students are going through. I work my hardest to make sure they never feel defeated or humiliated in their struggle to learn not only English, but Algebra at the same time as they adjust to life in their new country.

I am a Bay Area native. I grew up in Mill Valley and earned my BA at UC Berkeley. Life comes full circle and after living in Oakland, San Francisco and Hayward, I am now back in my childhood home in Mill Valley where I care for my elderly father, my two sons and my three dogs. For relaxation I play the cello in the Mill Valley Philharmonic, and in the summers I enjoy white water rafting and traveling to my adopted home in El Salvador.